An absolute lifesaver. I must be spraying an equivalent of a full shot of the cherry-flavored stuff every night. It’s the only thing stopping me from scratching the inside of my throat with a wire coat hanger.
I don’t take it to work with me because I’m afraid I’d accidentally leave it there, and then I’d have to go a whole night – or in the case of today, a whole weekend without it. I already suffer (and make those around me suffer) from apnea, so without my trusty blood red Chloraseptic spray, my girlfriend would probably smother me with a pillow halfway through the night. On a related note, last night we slept under a mosquito net that she brought back from Thailand as a sort of joke and rigged up on in our bedroom by hanging from cheap resin string attached to the curtain rods, door stops, and the ceiling light. It was kind of fun at first since it added an Indy Jones-ish mystique to our typically Japanese tatami-matted room, but sleeping under it can be described aptly in a single word: Claustrophobic.
It may have been psychological, but it felt ten degrees hotter under that thin netting than the rest of the room, and I spent all night dreaming of being a female replicant being chased by Harrison Ford and wearing a wedding veil in a stuffy old warehouse – a true testament to the power of movies! Anyway. I woke up this morning to the sound of my alarm clock ringing (it really rings when you have a headache, doesn’t it?), and did the good old “blind wild cougar swipe” in the general direction of the evil sleepkiller… And brought the ceiling light crashing down on my leg since my swipe thrashed the so-easily-forgotten mosquito net just hard enough to pull the string attached to the light etc. etc. and so forth (compliment The King and I, Yule-not-Chow-Yun version). But all was not lost cuz the bulb Did Not Break.
Girlfriend wakes up, covered in limp netting yet in all her morning beauty, and sweetly asks, “WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?”
If you ask me, who am I supposed to ask?
Month: May 2004
Synergistic Counter-Strike
So it turns out that my girlfriend brought back more for me from Thailand than met the eye. I inherited this Bangkok bug that is just laying me to waste. For starters, a 24/7 splitting headache that can only be fought off with the Big Green Pills (Nyquil). Sore throat. Sporadic coughing and lung-boogers. General shit-like feeling and soreness of joints. Compounded by the crappy weather today – rainy, hot, and humid – and the screwy air conditioning in our office which means I suck down cold humid air instead of hot humid air. As you can imagine, the overall effect this bug has puts me in a foul mood, which is kinda irritating since I’m normally such a rosy-tempered motherfucker.
So I was killing hordes and hordes of Koreans and Chinese playing Counter-Strike last night (154 kills – 28 deaths!), when this guy “[hxr]Chiang” starts accusing me of cheating and initiates a kick-vote against me. I didn’t get kicked. But I stopped playing for a while to take the Big Green Pills and found I was out of soda water (tap water in Sumoto has started to taste moldy; it will return to normal in the fall again). So I popped the pills with a beer, some designer pilsner I bought on our trip to Gifu last year that cost 800 yen per 500 ml bottle (which seemed like a good deal at the time since I was wasted on hot sake and paying for 10,000 yen Matsuzaka steaks – but that’s another story).
When I joined the server again, Primeiro Comando (run by nikkei-Brasilians up near Yokosuka), the Terrorist and Counter-terrrorist teams were split by country, which is a pretty common occurrence these days. Basically, Americans and Japanese players typically play the CT role and all other nationalities gang up on us, planting bombs, killing hostages, and trying to smoke our yankee asses in the quickest ways possible. As I said, this is all just the usual shit playing CS in Japan. I never take the bait when these fools bait me in the in-line chat saying shit about how fun it is to see Americans and Israilies beheaded by ragheads and how if it were them, they’d have shit down their necks and stump-fucked them, etc. etc. etc. (it really is a wonderful game, you should try it sometime)
Well, as it happens, the Big Green Pill and Mr. Pilsner decided to put me in an altered state of sorts, and while William Hurt never appeared and I didn’t climb into my furo, close the lid, and declare it an isolation chamber in which I could de-evolutionize, I did manage to knife in the head the previously mentioned [hxr]Chiang even though he was spraying at me wildly with an AK, win the round, and then type in the chat before the next round, so everyone could see, “0wnz0red.”
Oh my. I’m afraid I singlehandedly started WWIII online because the racial epithets, cheating accusations, and high school level political commentary got quite thick, and ended with somebody crashing the server with a DDOS attack. I just signed out for the night and zonked out, dreaming of the valley of Big Green Pills. I only woke up because mosquitoes were biting the hell out of my ass, literally, and I had fallen asleep with the sliding glass door open, not knowing about the mini-typhoon which blew rain onto my tatami and reminded me of monsoon season on faraway exotic beaches.
Leave the Goddamn Chihuahua Alone
Oh great. As soon as I give props to a band, they turn around and insert shiv directly in my spinal column. The MTV page I linked to in my previous post has a link on the right side:
Audioslave’s Tom Morello To Protest Taco Bell
Hey Tom (or is that Mr. Nightwatchman?), stop quoting Cesar Chavez and shut the fuck up! The fucking chihuahua loves Cesar Chavez, but if you bring down the Evil Empire and leave us with nothing but Green Burrito/Carls Jr. franchises and Delfucking Tacos, I’ll be really pissed.
Ex-Civilian (Audioslave)
A mix between Back in Black and The Joshua Tree would be interesting but the only thing I really care about is that it doesn’t SUCK. This is one of the only recent bands worth listening to. Period.
I may have a line on some studio recordings for the second album. I will update on this later. Just remember, I had the full Battle of Los Angeles CD in stere-ereo a full month before it went on sale (of course, so did half of the other Hotline haxxors). But that was a long time ago. Let’s just say that an old friend happened by the other day.
Here is a good Audioslave bio, including a bit that my brother and I disputed often regarding the rumors of a break up before their first album.
Note: If you are a hit parader, you have no right to comment on this post.
Dual-byte Expressionism
(^o^) <-- GO!
Buddhism Wireless Life ???
There’s this really weird GoogleAd on the Blogspot banner over at the Big Ho’s right now. The link says “Buddhism Wireless Life” and links to http://www.wiphi.net/. No link, because there is something sinister about the site. Like the webmaster is watching the hit logs in realtime, tracing your IP, and watching you surf his site through your own monitor as he masturbates with Pringles-greasy fingers. Brother J says Yuck.
I’m not surprised that comment implementation for Blogger sucks big hazelnuts, but I’m kinda bummed I didn’t get to troll the Ho at least once. Dammit. Sending E-mail is so non-whorish. Plus, you gotta click like five times or something. Too much effort!
Festival at Miwa Shrine
Following their animistic roots, Cosmic Buddha went to the Miwa Grand Shrine as first documented in this post. Since then, I repeatedly forgot about some of the other photos waiting to be uploaded, but suddenly remembered today. So without further ado:
This lovely illustrated guide tells you how to cleanse yourself before entering the sanctuary.
This is one of the five samurai on site for the celebrations. He was smoking a short Hope (US equivalent: Camel straight). There were supposed to be 300 samurai. Kansai Timeout, you suck (unless you published a link to this site as one reader reported, in which case you rock, doodz).
This old guy cracked me up. He had more energy in those old bones than anyone else at the festival.
The moment of truth! The mikoshi is carried from the shrine to the outer sanctuary in a flurry of oioiois and yoshas.
OK this is classic. I thought my picture taking went unnoticed but look at the ” what a perv” expressions on these miko. I tell you, real virgins wouldn’t have such fire in their eyes. The one on the left is straight out of a Tale of Genji woodblock print. Now that’s a virginal pose…
I have this strange obsession with wooden footwear… It’s just so cool.
Top 15 Names for Wal-Mart Wine
15. Box O’ Grapes
14. Chateau du Crack Chardonnay
13. White Trashfindel
12. Big Red Gulp
11. Grape Expectations
10. Domaine Wal-Mart “Merde du Pays”
9. Sam’s Dog 20/20
8. Chef Boyardeaux
7. Trucker’s Choice
6. Blue Light Special Nun
5. Chateau des Moines
4. Mogen Darryl
3. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Vinegar!
2. World Championship Wriesling
and the Number 1 Name for Wal-Mart Wine…
1. Nasti Spumanti
Courtesy of my reader, Jen
Vendor Problems
It’s never a fun thing to have to deal with yakuza because of a fuck-up created in your own procurement department.
Before Golden Week, the stupid noobie manager in Procurement, down the hall, decided to use a local company to mold parts for our products and went by their office yesterday afternoon for a friendly chat because the parts never arrived. He ended up coming straight to our office crying and about to wet his pants after noticing matching Ferraris and a Bentley in the car park of their gated office complex.
Fuck. The dumbshit picked, out of all the experienced vendors located in and around Kansai, a goddamn money trap. My manager is determined to get out of any situation we may find ourselves in without paying a single fucking yen to these guys. I find it ironic that I know otherwise and will have to explain to him why at some point in time. They hired me for my overseas business skills, but this time it’s as local as it gets. Man, they really lit a fire under my manager’s ass. He’s been in meetings with higher-ups all day. These corporate mafia types know how to threaten big companies, because that’s how they make a living. These guys are small time, though. This can be squashed at the lower levels.
I am so sick and tired of these petty mafia fucks popping up all over. Always gotta be on guard out here on the island. It’s a goddamn yakuza retirement community. One accident with the wrong car, and your ass is seaweed fertilizer. Hell, I joke about it, but another manager in this room is still making monthly payments to a yak his daughter bumped into at a nearby intersection more than five years ago. Goddamn it.