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Friday, December 16th, 2005
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Friday, December 16th, 2005 @ 6:49pm - you may have noticed
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I sold out. I made the jump.
http://www.myspace.com/jimgetsreal
No more blogging, as there's little going on in my life of any consequence, but if you're trying to keep in touch, then throw me a line at the myspace. i'll get it. i'm on there a little too much.
this will probably be my last LJ post.
peace!
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| Monday, October 3rd, 2005
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Monday, October 3rd, 2005 @ 4:31pm - Getting Stuff out of My System
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Saturday was the first day off I've had in over a month so I went to Hynes's house with a bottle of Barton's American Whiskey ($9/liter) and got myself about seventeen kinds of sloppy. People were coming and going all night and we pretty much just hung about acting like retards and drinking horrible drain-cleaner-esque liquor. Until Bagel showed up with Captain Morgan's Private Stock. Yum. Then we were acting like even bigger retards and drinking good liquor.
My plan was to write at least a dozen songs and record them all, but I only got to writing about three because our recording tech didn't show up till midnight and each time we tried playing a song it turned into a thirty-seven (yes, 37) minute jam of shrieking, ethanol-fueled quasi-"music". Then we'd all hustle up the steps and smoke cigarettes and continue drinking. When it was all over, Bagel and I, feuled by the bacchanal rage of it all, proceeded to destroy part of Hynes's basement.
I laid down on the kitchen floor and spilled water on it, and Bagel and I filled up Dirk's voicemail box with vaguely accusatory messages chiding him for not finding the seventh monkey magnet (all I remember).
Then I ate a corner of Elio's Pizza and went to sleep on the living room couch.
To those who said they want a copy of what we recorded: just... uh, be warned.
current mood:  refreshed
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| Thursday, September 29th, 2005
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Thursday, September 29th, 2005 @ 4:04pm - Recent Moseys and Floatings
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Payday at the paper depot is like a holiday - everyone comes back in the late morning after their routes and hangs around, waiting for checks. Many of the carriers bring their kids back with them, as they are awake by then and not in school... the old salts hang around the loading bay with Miller Lites and smoke cigarettes, while I slept face down in a copy of the New York Times arts section. Many people shouted down the supervisors about gas raises and allowances. The company, apparently, has not given a gas raise in seven years, when gas was a dollar a gallon compared to today's three. That tension was quite exciting. But I took my $657 and went home. They've put me on a different route since I flipped out on them last Saturday, so now I deliver in my hometown and get done at 4:30 a.m. Now I can go to sleep when it's dark out and wake up at a semi-normal hour. But I'm gone from that job in scarcely a week.
Colin and I hung out yesterday, went to Bagel's house to play with guns and guitars, and on an unrelated note, almost got ourselves into an independant film as extras. Anton is involved in some rather impressively-budgeted film and told us to come to 90 Main, which is a fancy, yuppie bar and lounge in New Hope (where most things are fancy and yuppie). We went by to say hello but we decided that maybe it wouldn't be that exciting after all, so we went to his house and made some silly music.
I dropped in on Nick and Lauren the other day and Zoe showed up, cute as ever and bearing beer, marking the first time I'd seen her in about a year. I feel like in another three months I'll still be running into people I should've been catching up with ages ago. Anyway she's doing well and yesterday I visited her at her place in Doylestown, hung around to accompany her and her roommate grocery shopping, broke their antique kitchen chair by mistake, and left for Matt Hynes's house.
We developed a plan for his upcoming 21st birthday. We're going to involve whoever wants to come, and we're going to record a full-length CD in one night, with no prior preparations except for having musical instruments and recording equipment on hand. We will write, play, record, and produce all of the songs on the spur of the moment. Also, we will be riotously drunk (something I have not been able to be in quite some time due to my job). The finished product will probably be very strange and shitty, but that'll be part of the fun...
current mood:  excited
current music: Against Me!
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| Thursday, September 15th, 2005
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Thursday, September 15th, 2005 @ 10:44am - Oh Yeah, This Just In
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There is a house on my way home from work with two pink flamingos in its front yard. But these flamingos are inflated, and at least as large as I am. And while I don't know if it's because of vandalism, ignorance, or happenstance, these two flamingos are totally getting it on. There's no other possibility. It is super ninja crazy doggy-style flamingo sex up in there.
Posts like this are why I need to get some kind of digital camera, but fuck it, I've already written it and I think it's funny.
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Thursday, September 15th, 2005 @ 10:30am - Razor Burn Never Felt So Good
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World: "Heehee, what's next? A five-bladed razor?"
Gillette: "You think it's funny, but it's not."
Yes, Gillette is coming out with a five-bladed razor next year. Also, CNN Money calls it a "system".
I want each and every one of you to listen very closely to what I am about to say: A razor is not a "system". A razor is a simple machine. It is, in essence, a wedge. That's it. It's just a fucking tiny little metal wedge. But now, apparently, none of our lives are going to be complete unless there are five wedges working together in a "system". If something gets to be called a system, it has to either orbit around something, or crunch numbers. If anybody out there is reading this and thinking about how unfulfilled his life was when all he had on his razor were three blades, and is now beginning to feel that long-missing drop of sunshine trickling back into his gray life, I certainly don't know him. All I can say about him is that he was probably extremely excited about Sean Combs changing his name to "Diddy".
But the fight is over. We've lost. Cooler heads did not prevail. A five-bladed razor, which was once the impossible water-cooler joke, has now made serious news in financial circles. So now, there is no limit. One more blade means one notch better, no matter fucking what. So we'll be up to eleven by the next election.
From now on, you will be able to spot people who haven't lost their fucking minds by the small red nick-marks on their cheeks. I will wear mine with pride.
current mood:  amazed
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| Thursday, September 8th, 2005
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Thursday, September 8th, 2005 @ 10:06am - Egad!
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I feel... wiggy.
These are strange days. I expect everything I thought I knew about reality to just completely break apart at any moment.
Weird, isn't it?
current mood:  wiggy
current music: dandy warhols
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| Friday, September 2nd, 2005
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Friday, September 2nd, 2005 @ 11:58am
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I do not like people who don't put any kind of number or marking on their house that would let a delivery driver know what address they are. Actually, I only dislike this when they call to complain that somehow, inexplicably, their paper was delivered to somewhere else nearby and they had to walk forty feet or more in the mild, breezy, late summer sunshine to get their Wall Street Journal. While stories like these certainly make my heart go out to these poor, suffering, suburban professionals, I still need a little more to go on than birdbaths and hedges.
I will gladly make any concession a customer wants due to every reason (disability, old age, paper theft, etc.) except for snotty laziness. If you want your paper on your doorstep, fine - just don't continue keeping your address such a dark and foggy mystery.
This just in - constitutional amendment forbidding anyone from using the word "liberal" without preceding it with the word "elitist". From glancing at blogs and editorials, I'm becoming more and more convinced that these two words will become one by the end of 2009, thus making them the two most unlikely bound morphemes since "titmouse". I love being called an elitist asshole by someone on TV who wears a $3000 suit, lives in Manhattan, and probably snaps his fingers at waitresses when he wants more champagne. Especially when I've just returned, weary, from my warehouse/delivery job. Maybe that's why my ass is bleeding - I'm "out-of-touch" with everyday Americans! Evidently I'm an every-other-Tuesday Canadian or something. But apparently, since I'm a staunch liberal, I like wine and cheese and look down my nose at... um... myself? I also like it when people who have dedicated their entire lives to serving in the federal government get up and tell me that the federal government is the Root of All Evil. I also like it when pundits and officials advocate measures that everyone with eight or more neurons knows will be a complete and unmitigated disaster, just to save a talking point. Let's increase government spending (while we tell people that big government is a problem) and simultaneously cut taxes, because, y'know... Them Taxes is No Good. It's Your Hard-Earned Money(TM), after all. Nobody likes taxes! But if you pretend like thinking this is the right idea on principle makes it the right idea... you don't belong anywhere near a checkbook, much less a legislative body. Dumbasses.
Q: "But Jim, could YOU do a better job than our current representatives?"
A: "Yes."
Vote for me, 2008, Pennsylvania 8th district congressional seat.
On a mission with Jim to invent the most complicated card game ever created. Called Zulu Death Siege. Spent a few hours working on the rules a couple of weeks ago. Much progress made - not enough. While already completely incomprehensible to the casual observer, we need more. After all, poker is completely incomprehensible to the casual observer. But me, Jim, and Eel still very much enjoy the occasional lively game of Uzbekistani War, an earlier invention.
Got 4th place in Lambertville again. Eel got 3rd. Considering I consistently place in the top 5, I feel like a prize is not far in my future. Just gotta hang in there. Fun and free either way... but I really need some damn money. I was on fire early on but soon got a string of garbage like 7-3, 10-5, J-4... etc. Just slipped slowly and got blinded to death when they went up.
I called my local emergency management agency and told them that if they need someone to drive supplies to Louisiana or clean up messes down there, I'm their man.
Also I'm applying for a job driving a truck between here and Florida twice a week. God willing...
current mood: elitist
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| Thursday, August 25th, 2005
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Thursday, August 25th, 2005 @ 3:23am - Guys...?
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This is my first update since I've been back in the USA. Yes, I'm back. I've been back for almost a month. But I haven't been posting because I haven't really been having many postable experiences. Let's see:
-John had a going-away cocktail party because he's going to college in Alaska. It was fun. I heard you had to dress up so I dressed like something similar to Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing - panama jack hat, aviators, a tan corduroy coat, and a bolo tie. Obviously skinny-dipping happened.
-I won 31 consecutive games of ping-pong in Laura's barn the other night and earned the title of Galactic Dynasty.
-I participated in a poker tournament in Lambertville, because it was free to play and top prize was $100, and because I like poker. I came in 4th out of 32, which I'm pretty happy with, although I didn't get anything. I lost by going all-in with trip 10's but my opponent caught a flush on the river. Sigh. But it was damn fun, I was the last guy at the table under the age of 40. Maybe next week.
And that's about it. Might take a job delivering papers in Cheltenham for decent money; it's seven days a week but only a few hours a day.
current mood:  satisfied
current music: Refused
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| Thursday, July 28th, 2005
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Thursday, July 28th, 2005 @ 6:07pm - Never Mind the Cowboys
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I've been informed by alert reader ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kamacazee666 that cowboys do not, in fact, live in the desert. I have my doubts about that claim, but Miss Cazee is in fact from the desert, and my chalkboard map made no claim that cowboys actually lived in the desert. Here at Remote Planet, Inc., we hold ourselves to a high degree of accuracy and precision. So, in the interest of not having to step in the same shit twice, I've included a partial transcript of a rambling explanatory e-mail I sent to Miss Cazee, in response to her criticism, WHICH, as you may choose to note, explicitly called me a damned liar.
( I Don't Really Care Much for Cowboys Anyway )
current mood:  geeky
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| Wednesday, July 27th, 2005
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Wednesday, July 27th, 2005 @ 5:58pm
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I feel good that I haven't been clogging everyone's friends page with my typical massive posts, but enough of that.
Just got back from summer camp. What a relief! Not being back, I mean. I mean it was a relief to go to summer camp. Very good for the soul. It's out in one of Beijing's rural counties, not far from the Wall, and the first thing I realized about the location was that I could occasionally fucking hear myself think. There were twelve classes, which meant twelve foreign teachers, which meant lots of cool company. Bruno was there, and the Three Sisters, and Katie, and a few others I hadn't ever met before but turned out to be very awesome folks. My roommate was an English fellow named Will who I now count among my good friends. I taught class 8 (BLACK TEAM!!! ARRH!), which was roughly 10 to 12 year olds. They were very good. After teaching months upon months of kindergarten, it was nice to have students I could have a conversation with. In typical summer camp fashion, they spent the first day or two sitting there twiddling their thumbs and not saying a word, but at the end when it was time to go home, they were all bawling their eyes out...
We organized a few fun activities, like the Summer Camp Olympics (remember that the Chinese are looking forward to the Olympics in much the same way that Christians are looking forward to the Second Coming), and final projects for the closing ceremony... plays, songs, etc. By day we'd teach English and culture. My favorite day was when we drew a big huge map of America on the chalkboard and filled in all the various places we knew... wound up with a LOTR-style map with cactuses where the deserts were and warnings that said "Thar be cowboys" and such. By night Bruno, Will and myself would stroll down the (quiet and empty!) road to the lakeside, where there was a patio foodcourt. We sat, chatted, played cards, drank beer, and ate lambsticks. Then we'd go home and do it again the next day.
It was nice to be in a place that was a little quieter, a little cleaner, and a little simpler. Now I have a little while in Beijing before coming home, which will take place on an undisclosed date. I've helped myself to Ryan's bike (and it has not been stolen yet, as far as I know). I've sold my mobile to Shareef, and begun arranging a massive pile of crap to give away for free or sell for one yuan or something. Right when I finally make peace with China, it's time to leave...
current mood: contemplative
current music: buzzcocks
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| Saturday, July 9th, 2005
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Saturday, July 9th, 2005 @ 4:47pm
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I'm unlucky.
On Wednesday I woke up with an unexplainable, shrieking pain of massive magnitude in my left hip and was unable to leave my bed for three or four hours. But then I had to go to the bathroom, so I ran out of options and trudged through the pain. I wondered how much worse childbirth could possibly be. I was unable to call for help because my cell phone was out of minutes. As I hobbled to the house phone, I thought, man - wouldn't it be absurdly unlucky if, for some reason, this phone had been disconnected during the night?
And, of course, it had been.
So today, my hip is feeling much better and I can get around pretty well now. But then this morning, I got up and went to the fridge for some water. I opened the refrigerator door and watched this bizarre chain reaction of tumbling objects, like in that board game Mouse Trap, as the oolong tea bumped the banana which bumped the coconut juice which nudged the jar of nonsense which fell out of the fridge and broke, and somehow sent a shard of glass flying perfectly horizontally at my foot, and slashed it, causing me to bleed everywhere. So before I could enjoy my glass of water, I had to clean my foot, apply pressure, clean up the shattered jar of nonsense, sweep away the remaining shards, and mop the area. Also, whatever the nonsense was, it was spicy, which made my foot wound hurt extra-much.
I'd go out to get some food, but I'm afraid that if I do, I'll get hit by a bus or something.
current mood:  unlucky
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| Friday, July 8th, 2005
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Friday, July 8th, 2005 @ 7:12pm - The Coolest Thing About the Universe is...
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| Monday, July 4th, 2005
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Monday, July 4th, 2005 @ 3:30am - A Dubious Kabob
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Here's a story that I was supposed to tell a long time ago but never got around to it.
On a warm spring night several weeks ago (I believe it was right after we watched Star Wars), Ryan and I strolled down the street to the restaurant by my house that has three kuai draft beers, as we so often did in those days. Well, if there's anything I can safely say about Jedis and wookies hot, screaming light-saber battles and hot, screaming Natalie Portmans (Portmen?), it's that you'll work up an appetite pretty damn quick. So we went for three kuai draft beers and stirfry and barbecue.
Now, we'd laid out a pretty adequate array of food on our table, but something from the barbecue division was still missing. So Ryan took it upon himself to order some toasted bread skewers. Basically just toasted dinner roll slices on a stick, maybe with some spices. A nice, safe choice. Kao mianbao.
So after a few minutes the waitress brings us a plate with something that is definitely on a stick and definitely spiced but is definitely not toasted bread. Ryan and I looked at it warily for a while and shrugged our shoulders. It sat on our table for a bit while we did other things.
But it was mysterious so I kept on rolling it over in my head. What had they gotten wrong? Ryan's Chinese is far from perfect. I know he did say "kao mianbao", so they must have misheard him. But what would they have misheard it AS?
Well, it was then that I made the connection. Ryan's "kao mianbao", which means toasted bread, sounds a lot like "kao yangbao" which does NOT mean toasted bread. "Yangbao" means "sheep treasures". I want you to think about that one for as long as it takes you to understand why, when I looked up at Ryan and saw that he was about to take a bite, I jumped up and said "Don't eat that!" in much the same way you'd say it to your three-year-old son who's just found the moth balls.
Now, I know that local flavors are this and that and some people would absolutely LOVE to eat kao yangbao and blah blah, but I do know for certain that Ryan was not one of those people. Plus, if you're going to eat it, you'd better be damn ready. It's the kind of thing that even people who don't like to send food back if it's not up to specs, send back anyway. It's difficult to describe in words the expression that washed over his face, and the way he laid the skewer, ever so carefully and cautiously, back down on the plate. But he did credit me with quick and admirable sleuthwork, and with helping him to dodge a bullet. And we never spoke of it again, except when Ryan pressed me to post it to my LiveJournal or when we were trying to tell compelling, yet gross, stories to babes in bars.
And that's how I narrowly saved my friend from eating a huge wad of grilled sheep testicles. Oh yeah, and we eventually got our grilled bread. So that's my unusual story. Ryan's is better, though: "I totally have had sheep testicles way closer to my lips than you ever have. So there!"
current mood: weird
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| Sunday, July 3rd, 2005
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Sunday, July 3rd, 2005 @ 7:28pm - Best Quotes From the Book of Ratings
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On Porn Movie Titles:
"I'm not entirely sure what a snatch attack is, but I'm definitely worried that it might happen to me. I'm equally worried that Pussyman will somehow be involved."
On Angels:
"So God rides a chariot made entirely out of multi-eyed flashing orb creatures that are actually angels. I can't help but feel that God would totally win a low-rider contest."
On D&D Monsters:
"They [githyanki] often have silver swords that can cut the magical cord binding astrally projected creatures to their home dimensions, which I'm led to understand is badass. This is entirely mitigated by the fact that they look like angry, emaciated Smurfs."
"It [the umber hulk] has the power to confuse onlookers, which is a power more D&D monsters should have. 'So this is, what? A perfectly round bird with five legs? I don't get it. What kind of monster is OW MY HIT POINTS!'"
"Among the many variations on brain-eating found in D&D, the mind flayer is about the coolest ... the brain eating is not purely metaphorical. This thing doesn't just feed on your thoughts or emotions, it pulls your damned brain out of your head with those face tentacles and swallows it like neuron sashimi."
On Walking the Plank:
"The 'victim' always ends up pulling some flippy action with the board, or being saved by a dolphin or something. Someone needs to publish a self-help book called Why Pirates Fail: A Guide To Stopping With the Plank Thing Already."
On Elements:
"Personally I'm not convinced that you should get to name an element until you produce enough of it to dare someone to eat it, but I don't make the rules."
"Nitrogen makes up nearly eighty percent of the Earth's atmosphere. You're soaking in it! If nitrogen was tiny spiders you'd be really unhappy until you died."
On Slashes:
"The only point here is that DOS uses backslashes a lot and UNIX uses forward slashes a lot and the effect of using both is somewhat like having Darth Vader for homeroom and Yoda for first period."
On Tortellini:
"And who the hell goes around sculpting the erogenous zones of major deities in pasta? If I had gone to this ancient tortellini-serving restaurant of yore, would I have been offered such dishes as tiny little Zeus nipples and a lovely bowl of the foreskins of Hades?"
current mood:  seized with laughter
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Sunday, July 3rd, 2005 @ 6:53pm - Essay: I'd Rather Have a Bloody Cunt than Koka Kora
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The Japanese borrow a lot of words from other languages. The Japanese language, however, has what may be the world's most limited syllabic flexibility, so when the Japanese borrow the word ice cream, it has to be maimed and reassembled into something like aisukuriimu before it gets to join the Jinglish club. However, the Japanese DO have a writing system whose symbols are totally divorced from meaning, so you can always tell when you're dealing with a foreign loan word.
The Chinese language is a little different. The number of possible syllables in Chinese is much bigger than that of Japanese, but still not very big. Plus, there's all that tonal distinction. What the Chinese lack that the Japanese do not lack is a purely phonetic writing system. Sure, they have this unofficial set of characters that already existed but don't generally get used all that much so they kind of just hang around waiting to be used in words like Liechtenstein (Liezhidunshideng), but they're still capable of holding wisps of their original meanings. So while that approximation of Liechtenstein could mean "line up branch honest nobleman register", especially if you're an asshole, it really just means Liechtenstein. Sometimes the approximation is as difficult to discern as thong fabric on a Brazilian beach: Switzerland becomes Ruishi, Chicago becomes Zhijiage, and Russia becomes Eguo.
Now, what I'm really driving at here, is that what with all this approximation and reapproximation and lexical enslavement, a lot of foreign brand names here in China have the potential to become really, really funny. In Japan, they probably just call Sprite something like supuraito. But here in China, considering the syllabic structure has nothing even approaching something whose third cousin once went out with Sprite's brother, they call it Xuebi. Now, the characters semantically mean something like Snow Jade - not bad. But, if you change the tone on both of those syllables, you get Bloody Cunt. And that's way, way, WAY better.
"Gosh, you know what would hit the spot on this hot, muggy day? A bloody cunt. Ayep."
Another one of my favorites from the vernacular is changing the tones on "I like the cursive script [of Chinese calligraphy]" can leave you with "I like to fuck trees".
So, yes, Japan's all like "we got this katakana thing so we can spell out loanwords" and China's all like "yeah that may be but we get bloody cunts and tree-fucking and that's way funnier". And Japan's all like "whatever" and I'm all like "time to go hop in the shower".
Oh, on a totally unrelated note: this site is really fucking funny.
current mood: amused
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| Saturday, July 2nd, 2005
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Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 @ 6:26pm - How To #2
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This week's How To is entitled "How To Name Your Indie Rock Band or LP".
You will need:
-a crossword puzzle
-a writing impliment
-a friend (optional)
1. Complete the crossword puzzle.
2. Ask your friend to give you a number between 1 and 99. Or just pick one if you have no friends.
3. Find the solution to said number.
4. Reverse the digits of the original number. (3 becomes 30 and vice-versa)
5. Find the solution to the new number.
6. Put both solutions together in an amusing way. Insert "the" or squish them together.
Here are some lively examples of this method from the one I completed yesterday:
East of Kevin Spacey
Asia Ike
The Deli Aura
Dys Dial
Abandoner Cosmo
Roam Soda
Easy Lemmon
Kyle as a Rule
Mrs. Syr
MCA PSAT
The Malta Leos
Ein Peruse
The Onor Ogres
Balboa Ride
The Tripe Union
Agramoe
Eggscorn
current mood: dorky
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Saturday, July 2nd, 2005 @ 4:36pm - Do You Say "puh-LAY-din" or "PAA-luh-din"? Also: a Rant
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Played a bunch of Halo last night with Ryan, Harley, and Jeff. It was a veritable Olympic Games of various contests, including CTF, King of the Hill, Deathmatch, and a special gametype that we put together (everyone is invisible and has one life and a sniper rifle). Jeff and I began by pulling an unlikely upset over Ryan and Harley in CTF, though after that we began to get trizzounced. Several close games of KotH ensued, most of which were decided by ten seconds or less. Then we moved on to Shadow Snorp (the invisible sniper variety) in which I continued to assert my dominance with a sniper rifle by scoring clean headshots on invisble opponents in dark levels. There's something beautiful about noticing a faint shimmer 200 yards away and then dropping said faint shimmer with a single bullet between the eyes. And it was satisfying to watch Ryan's jaw drop that many times in one night.
Ryan's leaving on the 13th, which is sucky because we'll miss him, but kinda good because he doesn't like this place and I'm sure he'll be happier in the USA.
I signed up for the Juren summer camp at Badaling, which will run from the 13th to the 25th and will net me 5000 rmb. I'll teach in the morning and play western sports with the kids in the afternoon. Then I heard that a friend of mine is teaching a different summer camp for slightly longer and getting 26,000 rmb for it. Balls. Also, he's leaving China soon and selling his motorcycle for 4000, which I would buy with the summer camp cash if I weren't leaving so soon as well. Some of you might be saying, "but Jim, you don't know how to ride a motorcycle!" To which I say: meh.
I have one more week of classes at the kindergarten, which is good because I'll have some more time to just sit back in the summer air and enjoy Beijing, but kinda sucky because it will be my last chance to see the most amazing little human beings in the world. It's kind of upsetting that I won't be able to see where they'll be ten/fifteen/twenty years from now. I am confident that one of my K4B students, Sunny, is the cutest child on the planet - nay, in the entire known universe. The other day she said "Jim, come here!" so I did. Then she signaled for me to bend down so she could whisper something in my ear, so I did. But then, instead of whispering, she kissed my cheek and gave me a big hug. I can now die happy.
( On a More Morbid Note: A Rant )
Just found out that my tutee landed an internship with the Korean embassy, so way to go Maria. (And of course a thumbs-up for Aubri.)
current mood:  enervated
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| Tuesday, June 28th, 2005
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Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 @ 5:23am - How To #1
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This week's How To is entitled "How to have a moderately palatable cup of coffee-esque beverage in Beijing when you're living on a part-time teacher's salary". I know for a fact that there are many of you out there, and this applies to roughly... me. But LJ's are by nature narcissistic.
The background here is that making or buying actual coffee, like with beans and drip and all that stuff, is really expensive in Beijing. If you go to a cafe or restaurant, do not expect to pay less than 15 yuan (nearly two USD!). I don't remember how much beans cost, but I do remember finding out once and being appalled. Plus, coffee you get in restaurants or cafes is usually shitty. There's always McDonalds, which can give you a halfway decent cup of drip coffee for 4.5 kuai, but... yeah.
So here's the result of my frustration coupled with a desperate need of creative outlet.
1. Put an ice cube tray filled with bottled water into the freezer.
2. Go to the Green Tree Korean Minimart on Chengfu Lu, where it crosses the tracks.
3. Obtain one (1) jar of Nescafe instant coffee. You want the jar, not the box. The jar is unadulterated. The box includes powdered milk and sugar in each pouch of coffee. You do not want this. We will be using our own ingredients.
4. Do NOT get the Korean-brand instant coffee known as Maxim. I am convinced that it is crystallized hell, and you will be too if you drink it. If you get Maxim coffee, say ten (10) Hail Marys and go back to Step 1 (one).
5. Go to the cooler down the aisle and obtain one (1) carton of something called "Sanyuan Breakfast Milk". Depending on your luck, it will be expired by one (1), two (2), or three (ew) days. Get a small one (1) whose expiration date is as close as you can get it to the current date.
6. Do NOT drink the Breakfast Milk plain. We tried this once and almost orally painted the inside of a taxi a charming eggshell-white.
7. Remove one (1) box of chocolate milk, the kind with the sippy-straw attached to it.
8. Remove one (1) half-liter bottle of water.
9. To your left you will notice an ice cream cooler. Remove one (1) small tub of vanilla ice cream.
10. Purchase your items and go home.
11. Put four or five heaping spoonfulls of the instant coffee into the blender you purchased months ago and have been looking for a reason to use.
12. Add the water.
13. Blend the water and the coffee crystals, but not too hard, because you don't want it foaming up. We don't know why it foams up, but we'd prefer not to think about it.
14. Add about half a box of chocolate milk.
15. Add about half a small carton of Sanyuan Breakfast Milk.
16. Add three or four spoonfulls of vanilla ice cream.
17. Add the ice cubes.
18. Blend. Be sure to cover the blender with a plate, because it did not come with a lid.
19. Pour into a glass and enjoy, preferably while hanging out your window on a hot day with the strains of rock 'n' roll music tickling your ears. Bring a book.
What you've ended up with here, if you did it right, is something that is not objectively what I'd call awesome, but is certainly way better than any one of those ingredients on its own (especially the breakfast milk). Plus, you can make at least a dozen blenderfulls of these before you pay what you'd spend on something similar at Starbucks. And there's no wucking fay that what you'd get at Starbucks is twelve times better than mine.
Be sure to stay tuned for next week's How To, which will teach you how to do something that I have not come up with yet and probably do not know how to do very well myself.
current mood: scholarly
current music: da pogues muddafucka
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Tuesday, June 28th, 2005 @ 4:56am - The Sprouting Seeds of Success
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Some of you know I planned to begin my Jim Quits Smoking Odyssey (JQSO) on my birthday. Those of you who would like to see Jim live past 50 will be glad to know that I've experienced a bit of success to that end. Here's the breakdown:
-As of a recent calculation of my cig intake over the past three days (which have been fairly typical), I've concluded that my average figure is 7 cigarettes per 24 hours, down from upwards of 15 to 20 before my birthday.
-Whereas, before JQSO, I would experiences mild urges within about 45 minutes of finishing my last cigarette, I now feel those same urges a couple of hours later.
-Before JQSO, on work days, I would generally wake up to a cup of coffee and a cigarette (sometimes two), and then smoke another one right after work while Susan and I went to get our lunch bing. Now I don't smoke any until I get home from work at noon, when I like to unwind, and if I choose to take a nap instead, I don't smoke any until well after I wake up. So now I almost never have morning smokes. But I still have that cup of coffee, and you will pry it from my cold, dead hands. I'm not quite as worried about coffee.
-During the first few days of cutting back (dramatically, it might be noted), I felt some symptoms like depression, sluggishness, and irritability, but those have pretty much entirely subsided. I haven't gained any weight, either (I think I've lost some.
-However, there are still those nights of drinking, which is usually when I fall off the wagon. But I get right back on the next day (which is not that hard because the next day is when my throat feels like a chimney).
Some things to be careful about:
-After eating large meals.
-Drinking booze.
-Drinking lots of coffee.
-Playing pool.
-Driving (assuming I'm home soon).
-Teaching at Nongda. Only two weeks left, though.
current mood: yay for limewire
current music: A.C. Newman - Slow Wonder
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| Saturday, June 25th, 2005
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Saturday, June 25th, 2005 @ 3:12am - Episode One
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The Useless Limb played their first (and second-to-last) gig tonight. All went pretty well, if you count the fact that the population of the floor at least tripled during our set compared to the other two bands at the venue. Much respect to them, though, who were really cool and entirely Japanese.
We played second out of three and sort of felt out of place. The first and last bands were Japanese punk outfits (and the show was advertised as a punk concert), and we were a Euro-American rock outfit which broke the mold by occasionally playing songs that dropped below the tempo of a hummingbird's wings. The overall reaction was good (largely thanks to the PR efforts of Justus). Some people decided that it was shit, but I handed them some Kleenex and kindly advised them to go home and cry about it, and reminded them that they were outnumbered by about 20:1 by people who enjoyed the tunes and had a great time and didn't feel obligated to stand around pissing and moaning about how we ruined their perfect evening. Case closed.
The flyer caused a bit of a ruckus. It was pretty clever on one level, because the members of all three bands on the ticket were represented by three countries, so they called the show "the romance of the three kingdoms" (title of a classic piece of chinese literature). However, the Chinese artist of said flyer (whoever he or she may be) chose to represent Germany with Adolf Hitler, the U.S.A. with a camoflaged and heavily-armed marine, and Japan as a slant-eyed, kimono-clad aristocrat. Hmmm.
Well, the Chinese in general are not really that familiar with the level of taboo that Nazis incur among Westerners. This is cultural and (in my opinion) is forgivable to an extent (after all, rumor has it that many Westerners dig merchandise featuring Mao Zedong, one of the most brutal dictators ever to walk the earth. This is also cultural). But I'm not entirely thrilled with the notion that I'll be coming back to America with a souvenir flyer from my band's first show that unabashedly sports a swastika and a Sieg Heil salute.
Anyway, what's done is done and politics notwithstanding, I'll probably be back in the greatest country I've ever been to pretty soon. In all likelihood DVD of the show will be returning with me. The 20-city tour that was offered to us will in all likelihood not happen because of schedule constraints, but we took care of what we needed to take care of: we had a fucking kick-ass time.
current mood: satisfied
current music: The Useless Limb - Music for the Satisfied
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