Angry Optimism

Hi people. Things change quickly in life. Sometimes they make your headspin so fast that when you finally get your bearings again, you realize you were headed in the wrong direction all along. I didn't listen to some of my friends who thought that getting back into a relationship with Anne was a good idea, due to our history. You all were right, and I was wrong. And I paid for it. That is life. I could regail you with the details, but it's not worth it. Same old, same old. History repeats itself.

However, this is probably good for me. Now, I'm going to dive into fulfilling my dreams. I had two dreams, one of a girl I created in my head, who really didn't exist at all, and one of getting into movies and pursuing more artistic endeavors. Now, I only have one path left.

I'm shutting down this blog, and starting a new one. This one was for Japan and I'm a different person now. Time to start again. I will post the new blog address up here once I've started it. Until then, everyone, take it easy.

Have once toiled away in the food service industry, constantly fighting the urge to punch out numerous customers, I should have sympathy for people, who's job requires them to have to constantly deal with other people. However, in my case, I just don't have any sympathy. On Friday, the temping agency I worked for called me up as I was wandering down the streets of Silver Spring on a trajectory to meet my brother for lunch. They had a job for me. Hooray. I need money, they want to pay me to go somewhere, everything is all good. However, since I was on the street and didn't have a writing implement, nor something to write on, I kindly asked the agent from Randstad to email me the info. She read off my email address to make sure it was the right one and then agreed to immediately send me the info. Of course, she didn't. Now, I know I'm working at the Hilton this week, but I don't know which one or any details in regards to the assignment. This really, really infuriates me because now, I have to either wait and call in the morning in the hopes that their office opens before 9 AM, or just take my chances and hope that I end up at the correct hilton. Fortunately, if I'm lucky, the Hilton is literally across the street from where I live. If I'm unlucky, I will have to fight traffic to get there.

This happened on Friday. Friday was a bad day. I also blew out my tire on the capital beltway during rush hour. Thus, pretty much all the money I make this week will go into fixing my car. So, that completely blows.

The Redskins also lost today. This just hasn't been my weekend. It's funny, I'm actually looking forward to Monday...

Hello everyone. If you can't figure out the above line, it's a Tyrone Biggins quote. It also kind of describes how I feel today. After many many dry months in Virginia, to the point that the drought had become so bad many areas were declared disaster areas, the clouds opened up and supposedly it's supposed to rain for the next week straight. I have a love hate relationship with the rain, I don't love it, I always hate it. Thus, I'm sitting in my house alone and thinking about what a fuckin loser I am for still living at home and not having a job.

Oh wait, I now have a job as a temp, so hopefully money will again start flowing into the coiffers. Thus, I shall once again be able to do good works and spread joy to the world. Actually, I went into randstad the other day to sign up as a temp, and ended up having to do three hours worth of interviewing and testing. I found out that I have high acuity for office work, and the personality test they gave me shows that I would be a horrible leader. Now, I take huge offense to this because the personality test was three hundred some odd questions and each question repeated itself over and over again in different ways. Of course, I was just honest with it, but that's bullshit to think that a test like that asking me questions like "You are sensistive to other people's criticism," agree, disagree, neither agree nor disagree. In the end, most of my questions were neither agree nor disagree. Yet, somehow this little test managed to tell me that I would work only if I was someone's bitch ass plebe. And that's completely fucking bullshit. I'm a natural leader. I have had to lead quite a bit in my life, but sure, I'm cynical, but I keep that to myself. A good leader should be cynical and be suspicious of others ability to complete a task, yet able to let them try anyway. That way, they can better predict weaknesses in the system that might need to be fixed later.

Either way, it doesn't matter, I have no intension of starting my career through randstad, it's just to keep money coming in, instead of just going out.

I've also recently enrolled in a six week program in NYC. I will learn digital film editing there. It should be really cool. I will tell you all more about it as the time approaches. The cool part is I will learn by helping cut an independent film and will get an assistant editor credit on it as well.

Tommorrow's football. Go Redskins.

Hopefully, by plagerizing my title from an old kris kross anthem, my adoring audience will excuse my month and a half absence. Currently, I'm still deciding whether I want to carry on this blog, ditch it completely, or alter it in some form or another, so as to fit the huge change in my life that begin a month and a half ago. I will deeply contemplate these options sometime in the near future, but probably not until I have a) gotten a job b) found somewhere to live c) created a blueprint of my future goals and how I'm going to get there (this one is on the agenda and has already begun in many ways).

Since I've come home, I've done many things, but instead of following any logical or chronological order, I'm simply going to list them in any haphazard manner that they appear inside my mind's eye (which, of course is it's own logical order). This morning, I flew back home after a six day stay in San Francisco, that was just gee golly gosh swell. It was a nice break that allowed me to continue doing nothing, although in a completely different location and time zone. It was really good to see Anne and it was cool to meet her friends, who were all very hospitable and hella cool. I also found out, that apparently I can cook pretty well, however, this was with Anne's help and might have been a complete fluke, but who knows. Shot out to Anne, Heather, Karen, Matt, Michelle, Aaron, and Chili. Thanks for brunch dude.

Allegedly, I pout a lot and in various locations, which include, but isn't limited to: public buses, bars, city streets, the grocery store, the kitchen, the backyard, in the park, and many, many other places.

While I love San Francisco, and think it's a fantastic city, this latest visit has simply confirmed to me that San Francisco has the most absurdely, mentally insane homeless people in the continental United States (Alaska?). Don't ask, just go. I think when Reagan released all the lunatics from the public asylums in the 80's by shutting them down, the craziest 10% must have been sitting there one day on a park bunch, covered in peanut butter, masturbating into a mason jar, drinking paint thinner and all came to the same conclusion that the relatively temperate climate, easy going attitude, and high percentage of smelly hippies in San Francisco created a trifecta that begat the perfect environment to be fuckin nuts, and all headed west on the wackiest greyhound bus of all time. So, yeah, I had a good time.

Thanks Anne.

Since returning home, my ability to speak English correctly and proficiently has drastically improved. Practice truly makes perfect, although me knew well forget english totally unpossible.

I saw Bloc Party in San Francisco and was reduced to a screaming 16 year old girl. Thus, I will now suck dick for blow.

More later. Bye peeps. -G

I'm sleeping in my old Tokyo host parents' living room tonight, because I no longer have an apartment and the Tokyo summer is a hot humid affair, that begets the need for an AC unit. However, Japanese economics makes central AC a frivilous waste, and Japanese houses are heated and cooled by room, instead of centrally, thus, the guest room, lacking an AC unit, would not be a particularly comfortable place to sleep tonight. Four years ago, roughly at the same time, maybe a week later or so, I moved out of their house. It was the first goodbye in a string of goodbyes, but this one is hitting a lot harder. The will I come back question mark looms ominously and I can only be human about the truth, thus I lie. Or at least, I distract.

Tonight, I ate the best tempura I've ever eaten. I told my host parents, two international surrogates whom love me like a son, how looking at the remains of the only building that withstood the anihilating force of the atomic bomb in hiroshima, put me on the verge of tears. Good tempura has a salty buttery taste. Reality has an achrid chemically taste that borders on sterility, or at least and agent to that end. My host mother talked about living in Hiroshima as a child. From first to third grade of elementary school. Her neighbor was beautiful, she said. Well, half of her. One half of her face was scorched from the atomic bomb. She eventually died at 24. I'm 24. Sometimes I feel like half of me is scorched inside. She told me that she remember shadows burned into sides of buildings, and how this scared her. In her neighborhood shadows were scorched into the pavement where a woman was sitting, until in a bright flash of light, she was vaporized. In the end, the skeleton of only one building remained. She lived near it. She was born after the bomb. Her smile and humor wasn't tainted with it. 100,000 men and women, killed in a flash of light. 40,000 more to die, skin falling off, immune systems failing, cancer invading, slow, slow, hope, dashed. A little girl gets leukemia. She believes a fairytale about folding a thousand paper cranes will cure her. She's 12. She does it. She dies. God punishes her for believing. The bomb proves there is no God. The war proves god is fallable. Imperfect designs. All of us. Urge to survive, urge to destroy. God's paradox. I order another beer, I force laughs, I shatter a glass by accident and get the urge to slam my hand down on the scattered fragments just to prove I'm still alive. I genuflect and apologize instead. My host parents smile. They love me. I love them. Mom. Dad. Seperated by language and six thousand miles of culture. Their smiles, their generosity is what still give me hope.

Sometimes, I get angry at Japan for giving me hope. It's made it harder, because it's robbed me of an excuse, and for that dear Japan, I bid you adue, and hope to return to see another rising sun here, when I have something to give back to you...

This is my second post tonight, wow, that must be a record for me. A lot of my loyal readers have been wondering why my rants have grown sparse, and my blog has slowly wilted like a rose in november (trying to being poetic before I digress into dick and fart jokes). Honestly, I think lately, I've just been too cynical to express, and if I chose to do so, I would just be a downer. I've been on this Earth for twenty four years and a little, and I've come to one unfortunate, but utterly realistic conclusion--humanity sucks. We have the capacity for indescribable beauty, but it barely masks the ugliness that pervades our existance. And thus, we live in a one giagantic wardrobe malfunction, acting shocked at utterly ludicrous times, while letting true tragedy, true immorality, true saddness continue its march forward, unabated, even by the smallest band of ambitious guerrilla warriors. We champion the accomplishments of the extraordinary, with a ten word blurb, or a two second sound byte, but their downfall is a crucifiction best viewed in an extended pay per view format, that nobody can resist. Worst of all, ten seconds later, lacking our adderal laced drinking water, we lapse into a socially ignorant catatonic state.

I'm stuck on why we grow to hate each other. Why relationships are just precursors to war, where vulnerability, and secret pecadillos, are simply morter rounds shoved into a cannon, by screaming artillery men, long deaf from the initial explosion of their offensive barrage. But the alternative of drinking alone, and paying complete attention to an internal monologue that berates and belittles because only a couple of us can be really special, is so much less enticing then a union that ultimately leads to conflict. And on the path of crushed hearts, glazed in a bitter naivete and self delusion reduction (whatever the fuck that means, that say that in fancy restaraunts, reduction, that is), and served with a side of steamed acrimony and capitulation. We beat each other down, and enjoy doing it, because at least it give us something to have pride in. Thus, we divide, we conquer, we rape, we pillage. For me, I just like to make jokes, not because I think the world is funny, but because it's so unfunny, and I'm really bad at crying.

Why can't it be simple? And yet, we all see it as so simple, and who am I to judge, I'm just as self righteous and self absorbed as the next person. Don't cry for me Argentina. For real, you got enough of your own problems. I hope I taught you something, because this post has taught me nothing. It has been an expression of the pain I feel when I look at the world. Especially lately. I love onions, the complement most cuisine, because in my opinion, they help bring out the flavor of the main dish. I hate peeling onions, but it's something you have to do to get to the main cliche, I've riddled this whole performance piece with. I guess that's all life is, one predictable performance piece. The only reason truth is stranger then fiction, is because our view of what life really is, is so naive and warped. To all of you, sleep well, in our dreams is the one place we all still reign...

So, I only have a couple more weeks here in the land of the rising sun. After that, time to move on to bigger and better things. The first wave of new ALTs who are coming in to replace the people who left have now arrived, and the death knell of my generation's era has begun to ring. And with it, quite possibly, angryoptimism, too. I know that I haven't posted lately, but I don't really see a point. My life is pretting F...ing boring. I mean, what do I do. I sleep, I eat, I jog, I lift weights, I bitch about my employer, and I drink. This pretty much encompasses my life. Recently, I've added cleaning and packing to that list. Oh yeah, I watch TV too.

Lately, I've been out of it, and frustrated all at the same time. Case in point, last night, I had nothing to do and so I decided to go see the movie the island. I went to the theater, and in Japan everything is listed in military time, yet, said in normal time. Meaning, what's printed 20:00, they say, 8 o'clock. And this unfortunate linquistic quirk has always messed with my head, as I learn better from hearing then seeing. So, I bought a ticket for the 20:35 show, the late show, which is the cheap show here costing a bargain 12$, instead of 20$. It's cheaper because most people ride trains and don't go to late movies because they might not be able to get home. Either way, for some reason I thought the 20:35 show was the 9:35 show (virtually all late shows, are after 9pm, in fact, on the board listing movie times, it says, late show after 9pm, and in this column they listed a mive as 8:35), oops, kind of stupid there. I've made this mistake once or twice before, but when they handed me the ticket, they said the time, thus correcting my misunderstanding, as is par for the course in Japan, along with a bunch of other weird honorific superlatives like, "Thank you, large penised, handsome, honorable, venerable customer-san, the movie begins at 8:35." Unfortunately, my ticket clerk was somewhat scared of white people, since afterall, we have different color skin, thus making us zany and unpredictible. And just trembled, and handed me a ticket, saying nothing, not even complimenting my monster penis. So, I went and ate dinner, and thought I had an hour to spare, so, I had a cup of pretentious coffe, and pretentiously read, the pretentious new yorker, hoping to find pretentious anecdotes, and pretentious cultural references, to tell people in order to demonstrate my pretentiousness. When I decided to make my grand entrance into the cinema, bristling with excitement, I felt dejected and possibly burdened with an extra chromosome, when the ticket taker (what is the actual term for this job?) informed me of my errror. "Sorry, Mr. Large Penised, Intelligent, Handsome, Honorable, Venerable, Retarded white man, the movie started an hour ago, and had you actually been able to read, you might have not made this mistake. Let me guess, you're an English teacher." I burst into tears, and then beat the shit out of the small 4'11 japanese girl with the hello kitty smile, and felt much better about myself. Hey, I'm a stupid white person afterall, and I'm guessing that's all I'll ever be.

It's not that I don't have a lot to say these days, it's just that I can't be bothered to say it. I could tell you that I'm busy, or that my computer is broken, or make some other excuse, but I'm just not in the mood to write anything anymore. Life has been weird. I decided that it was time to leave Japan, and then promptly met a girl who I liked. Murphy's law always kicks me in the balls. Everyone reacts to that one in the same exact way. Mouth curls up on one side, head shutters back a bit to the right and ends with a slight nod and a, "isn't that always the way."

I'm still coming home though. I like Japan, I love it in fact. It's like the world's most comfortable chair. It's like one of those leather massage chairs you come across in the mall. You enjoy sitting in it so much that you don't want to get up, but know you need to in fear of the salespeople sneering at you. I've been here about two years. That's really not a long time in comparison to a lot of people I know. I know English teachers that are pushing a decade in country. There's even one guy at my board of education who was one the original JET program ALTs in 1987. I was six years old when he got here. I just couldn't imagine doing some mind numbing work like that. Who knows though, maybe I will come home and decide that I can no longer function properly in the US. If that's the case, well, then I'll just have to go to grad school, come back and get fluent in Nihongo (Japanese word for Japanese), and take one of those bad ass jobs they offer foreigners who managed to become fluent and have usable skills. Unfortunately, that will require the acquisition of usable skills. Currently my skills list is: 1. Can run a 10k 2. Can type pretty fast 3. speak fluent English 4. Can out drink 90% of the people I meet 5. can shower, shit, and shave in about 6 minutes 6. speak intermediate Japanese.

So, yeah, I need new skills. Plus, I just need a break. This year has crushed my spirit. Whether it was feuding with my coworkers at the BOE, or have to break off the icicles off my testicles during the winter when I got home, since I couldn't actually heat my apartment, since running two heaters at the same time would cause the electrical system to short out. In general, I feel a little betrayed by my employers, yet the people I worked with at my school were amazing. I got to watch them sing some funny drunken karaoke last night. All my teachers were bombed. It was hilarious. Well, I guess that's all for today.

Oh yeah, here's a quote from Stephen King that I found that I would like to share.

"People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy... and I keep it in a jar on my desk."