Unsettling days.

This waiting around business isn't for me. I'd like to say these recent days have been busy and productive, but there's really not much for me to do. At the same time, they haven't been relaxing, either. There's just too much stuff I'm really anxious about.

I started shipping out my stuff this week. On Monday, I shipped out two boxes of indispensable books that managed to avoid the dumpster. I used "M-Bags" from the USPS--a good, cheap way to send printed material overseas (thanks to my friend Aaron for the tip, by the way). On Thursday, I sent out the box containing my PS2, George Foreman Grill, DVD Player, some old writing manuscripts, and other miscellaneous stuff. Together, both shipments cost about $200, and, seeing how I likely have about 2-3 more boxes still left (one of which being the ultra-expensive airfrieght for my PC & peripherals), I'm starting to get very concerned about my available moving funds.

That's why I really need my car to sell. I have an ad out in the paper, but that's only drawn a few phone calls. One guy said he wanted to look at it today, but the bastard stood me up! (Usually that only happens with girls, heh heh.) I've invested a lot of money into it recently: the new igntion lock cylinder, an oil change, a carwash + wax, and some long-overdue hubcaps. I've never had hubcaps on it before (they struck me as extravagent and unnecessary), but they're on there now. My car officially looks better than it ever has, but I still can't sell the damn thing. Once it does sell, I'll feel much more financially secure.

On Monday, I drove a van to pick up some international students from DIA. They're Kobe Kaisei students from the school I'll soon be teaching at, and I and another teacher needed to drive them from the airport to their dorms at Colorado State University via passenger vans rented out from CSU's motor pool.

This other teacher/van driver has disturbed me from the day I met him. He frequently discusses how much he loves all things Japanese, especially the women. I've met plenty of people who prefer Asian women, and I've often wondered if this constitutes a so-called "fetish." But now I understand the difference between preference and fetish. Preference means, I think, a natural gravitation toward a certain type, but nothing so single-minded that others of a different type are immediately disregarded. What this other teacher/van driver appears to have, however, is not a preference, but rather a full-blown Asian woman fetish.

Here's what I mean:

• Before deciding to go with two passenger vans, the IEP was planning on using one passenger, and one luggage van. This guy was quite insistent that he drive the van with people in it. What's the big deal? The exhausted students usually just fall asleep in the van, relegating them to the same sphere as luggage as far as company is concerned.
• When we arrived at the airport, this guy started taking numerous pictures of the students. Japanese girls are, for the most part, far from camera-shy, but they've been sitting on a cramped and hot airplane for the better part of 24 hours. If I were in their position, I certainly wouldn't want some stranger taking pictures of me. (I don't even want to know what he was doing with the pictures afterward. . .)
• Later, this guy started questioning the students about their physical dimensions. Not like underwear measurements, but rather height and so on. Strange, huh?
• When he arrived at the dorm his students were staying in, he stayed a full 30 minutes longer than I did. What was he doing? Well, according to him, he was helping them arrange their closets and double-checking on them to make sure they were OK before he left. How would you like it if some weird guy helped you unpack?
  

Overall, I was quite creeped out, but at least it was an educational experience on the distinction between preference and fetish. A fetish seems to entail an obsession or mania, and this guy definately seemed obsessed. The aggravating part of the whole episode was that this guy could get away with doing creepy things like this because the students, who likely haven't met too many Americans, might assume his creepy behavior is just the way American men are. The alarming part is that he might also be a teacher for several of these students at the IEP, and the combination of a lopsided power dynamic and an apparent obsession could create an awful experience for these students. I was planning on informing someone in power, but someone else who was there that night did the job for me (thanks Jordan!), so I can go away to Japan knowing that this guy will be monitored.

But that's about the only thing I really feel settled about right now. I'm having some mixed feelings about leaving Fort Collins. On the one hand, I love this town. I've lived in it for the majority of my life, and I know just about every neighborhood inside and out. I'm comfortable here. On the other hand, I often feel as if I've worn out my welcome. In spite of living here for years, there's only a small handful of people I'd really consider friends.

Oh well. This could just be another manifestation of the cyclical meloncholy I'm often prone to. Or maybe I'm just jittery about the upcoming flight, and my nerves about this are spilling over into other areas of my life. I really hate commercial flying. Really. Here's the truth: I would rather some guy in a safari hat shoot me a dozen times with a tranquilizer rifle and transport me to Japan in a gorilla cage than fly economy class across the Pacific. I'm dead serious, and if anyone reading this can help me out in this regard, I'd really appreciate it.

Anyhoo, enough bitching from me. I'll end this post with a picture by the incomparable Cyril Rolando. I think it accurately reflects my mood.

So bored, I figured I would post.

Hello. This will probably be a short post as I have little news to report.

My car is fixed--the key will now turn in the ignition thanks to the addition of a new lock cylinder, which, at a cost of over $100, is hopefully a steal. I'd like to say I'm really elated about my exciting and sexy new lock cylinder, but, unfortunately, I'll only be using it for a maximum of two weeks. At least the car will be easier to sell now that it works.

Speaking of which, if anyone wants to buy a sleek and stylish 1990 Oldsmobile 98-Series with 97K miles on it, let me know. My asking price is $1,500, but if you say you read about it on my blog, I'll knock it down to a cool grand. That's what we like to call "The Crepuscular Ray Difference."

I've also bought three new books for reading in Japan. Two are by David Foster Wallace--Oblivion, a book of short stories which I have not read, and Infinite Jest, a brilliant book which I began but didn't finish before letting someone borrow it (stupid me!). I forget who currently has my old copy, but now I have a new one and plan on starting over. The other book is The Sot-Weed Factor, by John Barth. This one comes recommend by Errol, my cell-mate back in high school (and much of junior high, elementary, and kindergarten).

All three books total about 2,200 pages, and their combined weight will probably add another $5-6 to my overall shipping expenses. But it should be worth it--the last time I was in Japan, I had quite a difficult time finding books in English (go figure). I can now add these three books to others I've been reading, but haven't finished, as well as others I've been meaning to start, but haven't gotten around to. With all the reading I'll be doing, I'll likely return from Japan with a massive, pulsating cranium that is even more brutally eye-catching than my current head.

On this freakish note, I'll conclude the post with a 3D piece entitled "My Uncle Cthulu", by Fred Bastide. If you've ever read H.P. Lovecraft (another author on my "to-finish" list), then you might recognize Cthulu, the immortal god of sheer terror and unpronounceable names. Cthulu represents a horror so intense that the mere sight of him (it?) regularly renders those who witness his sick, terrifying majesty utterly insane. Apparently, he's also an avid motorcycle enthusiast and relative of Bastide's.

Enjoy!

Free Stuff! (if you don't mind dumpster diving.)

I just finished moving out of my apartment, and in dramatic fashion. I spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday throwing all my stuff in the middle of the living room and then separating the 5% I needed/wanted/was-willing-to-ship from the other 95% that I had to say goodbye forever to. This was difficult! I kept thinking about how expensive overseas shipping is, and how badly I wanted to hang on to each item. When it was all said and done, I was on a first name basis with the guy at Savers Thrift Store, and 2.5 dumpsters in my apartment complex were filled with decades of memory-inspiring items that ultimately held no monetary value.

This wanton disposal of personal effects kind of made me feel like a cold-hearted bastard. So-and-so gave me this item!, I'd think to myself. What would they say if they knew I was throwing their gift away? Even worse was the items which conjured up instant memories--my dead grandfather's La-Z-Boy, my Japanese Matrix Poster, my WWI-era bayonet, and on and on. I worry that tossing all that in some sense means that the memories and meanings are, in essence, being erased (ala Kaufman's Eternal Sunshine) and I find this somewhat upsetting.

But that's enough of that. I am in slight danger of violating the dread "No Sentimentality" rule, but the fact is that this stuff is gone, so, in the end, the forces of sentimentality lost. This should please the rulemaker.

Some good news and some bad news:

The good news is that I am now currently able to fit all of my possesions in my Oldsmobile.

The bad news is that my Oldsmobile stopped working today. The key will no longer turn (no matter how much forceful jiggling is applied to the steering wheel), so I had to have it towed to a mechanic.

The good news is that I don't have to sleep in my Oldsmobile (which currently resides in the mechanic's noisy and crowded garage). My friend is letting me stay in her basement.

The bad news is that her basement futon isn't nearly as comfortable as my dearly departed mattress + boxsprings.

The good news is that I didn't have to donate or throw away the aforementioned matress + boxsprings. The same friend who is letting me stay in her basement is allowing my mattress to stay indefinitely in her attic.

The bad news is that I can't sleep in the attic on my beloved mattress + boxsprings. Not enough room; too much uncovered insulation and dust.

Other good news: the lady at the leasing office of my old apartment was quite pleased with the cleaning job I'd done on my old apartment. She'll give me my entire security deposit back.

Other bad news: I won't receive the security deposit for 45 days, when I'll be in Japan and no longer in need of the security deposit.

Anyway, that's the lowdown on the progress I've been making in my move to Japan. Things are shaky and nervewracking and just a little scary. But exciting at the same time! Kind of reminds me of this picture I saw recently. It's by a French (I think) 2D CG artist named Cyril Rolando. I've recently become a big fan of his artwork, which is often thematically-related and of highly symbolic nature (I think). This piece in particular has beautiful clouds--which I've always been a sucker for. Thanks for reading my post, and I hope you enjoy this picture.

cleared for launch.

About the biggest news this week is the return of my passport--with work visa attached on page twelve--from the Japanese Consulate in Denver. Receiving this was a huge load lifted off, as it was the final bureaucratic hurdle before leaving. I hate depending on bureaucracies for anything (let alone my entire career future), but everything's in my hands now and that's a good feeling. The visa itself has a picture of me, and under that is my classification of "professor," a category which I can't help but find somewhat shocking. I still tend to think of myself as liquor store clerk or windshield delivery man, but if I'm to be recognized as a professor I'll take it without offering any correction.

I also caught a cold this weekend, but I fended it off fairly quickly with some mysterious nasal goop called Zicam. I started feeling sick on Saturday morning, and didn't take Zicam until the evening. When I woke up this morning (Sunday) I felt awful, but by two or three this afternoon all the symptoms were pretty much gone. I was left feeling exhausted (like I had just spent a day fighting off a cold), but I have no doubt that I'll wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed and ready to complete the last week of the IEP's Spring I term. I don't usually like product placement, and I didn't plan on doing any advertising in this blog (never mind the earlier mentions of Wal-Mart and American Airlines), but if a 36-hour cold sounds preferable to one which lasts 3-6 days, then you should take Zicam. I'll try to see how much I can take with me to Japan.

I also told a second friend about this blog. His name is Zach, and he's my old freshman roommate. Here's a piece of trivia: Zach is the person indirectly responsible for the naming of this blog. He supplied the name for a favorite phenomenon of mine, and I thought that would be a good name for a blog (or a shade of hair dye). So there you have it. But anyway, more about Zach--as the morning anchor for the ABC affiliate in Colorado Springs, he has the most interesting job of all of my friends. Seeing as how he wears make-up everyday and isn't allowed to grow a moustache or get a cool facial tattoo, I feel obligated to tease him about his job whenever I see him. But I'm secretly very proud of him, and I like telling people I know a talking head on TV. I suspect he'll someday make it to an anchor position in Denver, which has been a longtime dream of his, or possibly teach broadcast journalism at CSU, which would allow him to live in his favorite town in the world.

Another important and interesting thing about Zach is that he has been keeping his own blog for about 2-3 years now. He puts a lot of time and effort into it, so it looks (and sounds) very sharp. Zach's very open with his blog, and he describes both insider TV news stuff as well as new things happening in his personal life--a very interesting combination!--with quality and engaging prose. What Zach's been able to do with his own blog is definately something I keep in mind as I tinker with this one.

Well, I'm getting tuckered out and am thinking about turning in for the evening. Here's a nifty little CG picture of wind generators on some alien-looking planet. I like this picture because the hermetic side of me (which constitutes about 85%) would love to live or work in such a spire-like wind generator on an alien planet. The artist is Daniel Trbovic and, as usual, I know little to nothing of him other than his website. It seems like Mr. Trbovic has a taste for alien landscapes, wind machines, and motorcycles, so he must be a cool guy. Anyhoo, enjoy, and have a nice week!

a nice tall glass of lucid prose ...

Not much new to blog about.

I bought luggage at Wal-Mart a few days ago. I paid around $60 for a 7-piece set, which is so startingly cheap I often arch my eyebrow when thinking of it, and frown as I consider the price's implications on the set's overall structural integrity. But of the 7-piece set, one "piece" is a tiny doc kit, one is a miniature duffle bag, one is a suit-carrier for all my non-existent suits I can't have getting wrinkled, and the final is a nylon pouch with drawstring, perfect for storing fruits and vegetables or the heads of my enemies. Those four pieces are worthless--if anyone wants one, I'd be happy to send it to you. The real reason I bought the set was for the three larger suitcases, which were stored together like a nesting family of Russian Matryoshka dolls. These suitcases range in size from large to large carry-on, have wheels and extendable pull-handle, and are constructed of seemingly-sturdy chemically-treated plastic/nylon mesh. They should perform quite well in carrying my dwindling stock of personal necessities--basically, what I need to survive before the rest of my stuff arrives via USPS global express.

In other news, I bought plane tickets. I'll be flying American Airlines primarily because they boast an average of four extra inches in leg-room. Four extra inches might mean little to normal-sized readers, but for a grotesque ogre of my physical dimensions, commercial air-travel is akin to a bizarre brand of humiliating torture. I hate it, and I often lay awake at night thinking of how much the 16-hour plane ride from Dallas to Osaka is going to suck. The plan is to heavily dope myself with tylenol PM. Anyway, four extra inches of legroom might allow me to do normal things, like fully lower the tray table or twist and slouch down in the seat for easier napping.

And that's about all that's new with the travel stuff.

In other news, I've been reading a book called The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I usually dislike most contemporary literary writing--with the exception of DFW's Infinite Jest, I really can't recommend much written after Nabokov's Pale Fire (which came out, I think, in 1962). But, after reading only the first hundred pages, I get the feeling I'll likely be ranking Kite Runner alongside other personal favorites seared into my memory. I usually approach books on an intellectual level, and Hosseini's crystal-clear writing allows for a smooth transition of ideas without any extraneous interference masked as "new" forms of artistic expression. It doesn't self-consciously beg for the attention of literary blowhards, and it isn't out to make some soon-to-be-dated political point or teach some retarded lesson (which is what I usually hate in contemporary literature). In addition to its unassuming and story-based focus, it succeeds in putting me in a place and time which I am completely unfamiliar with, and it does it in such a way that this place (Kabul) feels like home to me.

If that weren't astonishing enough, it also has a tremendous emotional affect on me, viciously rending me one moment before soothing me with gentle and pleasant descriptions. "Soothing?" Shit! I'm in danger of breaking the "no sentimentality" subsection of Rule Three in the last post, so I'll cease the mushy stuff by saying that this book often provokes in me physiological reactions of both visceral pain and cranial euphoria. Suffice it to say, I'm really getting a lot out of it, and when I'm not reading it, I'm thinking about it.

Anyway, the thanks for this book (as well as thanks for an uncountable number of other things) go to my friend, Elizabeth, who is currently living in a South African port town named after her, demonstrating the noble possibilities of our shared profession. She told me about the book in a recent e-mail, and, out of curiosity of her reaction and admiration of her vast knowledge and opinions on books, I immediately went out and bought it. As is usually the case with Elizabeth, her opinion was correct (in the sense that correct opinions mirror my own) and I feel yet again indebted to her, this time for introducing me to a superb work of art.

I also have to thank Elizabeth for giving me the idea of a travel blog, and then encouraging me to write one. Elizabeth keeps her own blog, and I find myself checking it regularly to see what's new. In spite of slow and unreliable internet connections, she blogs quite well, and I hope I can too. I entered this whole blogging thing with skepticism (see the first post), but it turns out that I enjoy keeping a blog, even though no one reads it as I haven't told anyone the URL yet. But I'll change that shortly. I think I'll tell Elizabeth first, and hopefully she'll like it.

Anyway, I should introduce the computer art for this post. For some reason, I like putting pictures on my blog--I feel like the curator of an online gallery or something. This piece is by Olivier Derouetteau who, I'm guessing, is a French artist with a specialty in two-dimensional computer art. Click here for his French website, Flatworld. I like this picture because it's simultaneously eerie and heartwarming. Heartwarming? God, I'm in a weird mood tonight. I'll try not to emote so much in the next posting. Expect heavily masculine doses of sweat, piss, and blood ... with some excrement thrown in for good measure! (ew, gross.)

Look out world. I'm thinking about unveiling this bad boy ...

This little blog experiment has been semi-interesting so far. This is my third post and I've only told one person about it ... yet I haven't given her the web address. Anyway, I think I'll tell her and a couple other people the specific URL later on this week, and shortly thereafter the course of human history will be forever altered.

I'm just kidding, of course.

But maybe it's not such a joke. Since the supposed "course" of human nature is constantly shifting according to inscrutable cosmic whimsy, the opening of one seemingly-insignificant blog might in all actuality be every bit as significant as, say, what Matt Carlson eats for breakfast on April 23rd 2007, or a regrettable index finger muscle spasm on a vice-presidential hunting excursion, or a minute seismic shudder on Jupiter's Io. Who can say exactly which events inspire and were inspired by other events, and exactly which consequences, among the trillions of thinkable and unthinkable possibilities, can be reasonably tied to any random and seemingly insignificant action?

Anyhoo, that's the kind of writing that four beers can bring out of me, and hopefully we won't see any more amateur philosophy on this page. In fact, I think I'll start establishing governing rules for myself and this blog:

1. No attempts at deep philosophy, particularly when bourne out of insobriety of any sort.

2. Future postings should pertain centrally to my experiences overseas. The entire purpose of this blog is to keep interested friends updated as to my whereabouts and activities.

3. When possible, try to make haha. This means no whining, no outrage, no excessive sentimentality, no overt didacticism, no boring information of any kind unless such writings are vehicles toward greater haha. Whininess, rage, sentimentality, didacticism, and tedium are characteristics to which I'm prone, and I don't do any of them well. So I'll try to just stick to haha.

4. Go Broncos.

That's a good start.

About my upcoming trip, I'd currently place the odds of all my best-laid plans tragically falling apart at less than one percent. This whole thing is almost certainly going to happen, and I'm starting to get a little nervous (hence this evening's ale indulgences). The Japanese Consulate in Denver has received my Visa Application and, assuming my credit card isn't declined (inshallah), FedEx should deliver the package to the Intensive English Program sometime next week.

I've also been in contact with future co-workers at Kobe Kaisei College. Talk about useful correspondence! I learned that I need to pack several years worth of deodorant because they don't have that there. Without that particular piece of advice, I might've started some kind of international incident.

Tomorrow I'm going to Super Wal-Mart to look at luggage, then to a travel agency to check out prices for an open-return round-trip airline ticket from DIA to KIX airport in Osaka. These weekend outings would be fun, but the roads in Fort Collins are caked with snowy sludge and the temperature is unlikely to get much higher than 15 degrees.

So, until next time, please enjoy another CG masterpiece (in this sentence, I'm addressing blog readers that don't yet exist, heh heh). This piece is by Matt Cioffi, a superb artist who works in richly textured photorealism and anthropomorphized simians.

Still busy ... no field trips.

The main reason I'm posting tonight is because I'm a little worried that blogspot might delete this page by virtue of its inactivity. I realize I likely have nothing to worry about, but here's a post anyway.

I'd actually been planning on posting more frequently, but I've been quite busy working at the Intensive English Program this term. I usually arrive at the IEP around 6:45 to 7:00 AM, and I usually get home around 5:30 PM . . . sometimes even later if a student needs to retake an exam or if I'm simply so behind on grading that I need to stay late to get it done. By the time my head's cleared on Friday, I find five days have simply vanished. It's a bit distressing, but it's the best job I've ever had so I shouldn't complain too much.

Plus, the IEP has been very good to me--helping me secure a high-paying career and all--so I feel working six ~50 hour weeks is a good way to start repaying my debt.

Here's some good news: Kobe Kaisei, the school that's hired me, has reported that the Japanese Immigration Bureau has approved my work visa, and the certificate is headed my way via airmail. Once I have the certificate, I need to take it to the Japanese Consulate in Denver so they can perform one last piece of bureaucracy on my passport. Then the last hurdle is cleared. I figured that I'd need to travel to Denver to perform all this, but a good friend of mine in Japan has informed me that I might be able to send a FedEx pre-paid envelope to the consulate, and they can get everything back to me in about a week. If this works out, no day off, no field trip to Denver, no need for a detailed blog entry (see the previous post).

In unrelated news, here's a funny anecdotal story about teaching Saudi students the intracacies of English Grammar: Earlier this week, we'd been discussing modals--should, would, could, might, will, had better, must, etc.--and appropriate situations to use them. On Wednesday, we were going over modals of advice using exercises from Betty Azar's seminal text, "Understanding English Grammar." Students were presented with hypothetical situations and asked to deliver advice using the forms we'd been drilling. For example, "what advice would you give someone who is getting a divorce?" or "what advice would you give someone who is failing their grammar class?"

My students--ten Saudi boys/men, a Korean guy, and a girl from Ghana--were performing admirably according to the tasks Azar presented, but everything fell apart at the prompt "What advice would you give someone who is traveling to Denmark?"

All of a sudden my Saudi students exploded:

"You SHOULD not go to Denmark!"

"You MUST not go to Denmark!"

"You BETTER NOT go to Denmark!"

Of course I was delighted to hear my students using the form correctly, but I was taken aback by the venom in their contibutions. Then I remembered the whole Danish cartoon controversy, and everything suddenly made sense. After briefly marveling at the collective emotion and cracking a few insensitive jokes, I politely asked them not to hurl rocks or firebombs at me and continued with the lesson.

It was kind of weird to see a fury similar to that shown on CNN evident in a classroom. I've seen the cartoons of course, and half of them don't seem too offensive, but I think the one with the Prophet sporting a bomb in his turban might've been a tad too provocative. Worse, it's utterly nonsensical: why would anyone think to link Islam and its adherents to explosive devices? I don't get it.

I suppose that's enough of a post for tonight. I think I'll end it by posting a beautiful picture I discovered on a CGtalk forum (check the link on the sidebar if you're interested). Anyway, I realize I'm likely infringing on some kind of copyright, but this picture is simply too beautiful to keep to myself. I commend the artist, Jason Chan, on this masterpiece and formally direct any intrigued readers to his personal website at www.jasonchanart.com.

Anyway, here's the image: