i'm sure it was an UFO

i'm sure it was an UFO
Originally uploaded by equusignis.

checking email at the mortuary

scene: 21:47h. i walk into the room and see dennis sacked out on the floor wearing sunglasses (the room is brightly lit) with headphones on. there is audio leakage of jimi hendrix manipulating metal strings to the tune of villanova junction. he cocks his head forward, lifts his shades up and squints at me.

dennis: there you are, where have you been?

me: oh, at the mortuary – checking email.

dennis: you've been *what???*

me: [as a matter of factly] i was checking email...at the mortuary...seeing if there were any messages!

he lies his head back down for a slice of a moment then perks up, stares at me then bursts out laughing with as much hysteria as someone lying down could. his belly pad shivers and the image of a white trash, irish-american, red-haired, musctached lucky boddhisatva comes to mind.

dennis: hah, it didn't really strike me until the second time you said it! only *you* would give me an answer like that.

i should have known it. i've seen you do it. i remember that day!

[there was one evening dennis had ridden up on his bicycle and practically fell over on the bike when he stopped. he was carrying a full bag of laundry, a backpack and the wind was gusting a good 20 mph. he said he had to tack to make it upwind and thought he would have to walk the last stretch. after catching his breath he said, "son, you are the only person i know who would non-chalantly sit there on a bench in front of a mortuary smoking a cigarette and checking email as if you were at a café or something!"]

me: heh, you aren't surprised at my behavior are you?

dennis: hah!!! hell no, you just made my fucking day dude!!!

me: always at your service, my friend...

dennis: god, the fuckin french assasin stikes again... [he puts his shades back on with a smile]

sleeping in bookstore

i had a dream that i was sleeping in a bookstore last night. it was as if the bookstore was my apartment or home or something. my bed was right up against a bookcase as if the bookcase was a nightstand or some other piece of normal bedroom furniture. in this place, i lived with a couple of others but i don't remember who they were. it was cold and snowing outside. there was a fireplace inside i think, it was warm and cozy.

it has taken a long time for my obsession with books to get in dreams.=)

passivus idiota

i have a new term.

passive idiocy: this behavior is occurs when someone is upset at you because you have kindly and politely put them in their place and tries to exert empty authority and agression upon you at a later time and fails horribly because they are too timid to make even a passing comment in your presence and you find out about their meek attempt of self consolation as they make those comments they should have said to you to someone else and a fourth party inadvertently hears it and reports it back to you. (yeah it's kind of circuituous, i'll have to make a diagram of it. pictures tell a thousand words. and bad karma is a bitch).

species likely to be found exhibiting this behavior: homo insapiens insapiens rolandus crackus moribundus.

36 hours to texas

that was what rob's bus ticket said. san jose, ca to dallas, tx by greyhound bus. that in itselft is enough or should be enough material for a short film. the first stop was in coalinga, ca. he asked me where that was. i said, don't worry you'll smell it before you see it. imagine a thousand head of harris ranch cattle waiting for slaughter and small hills of manure that is managed by caterpillar earth moving vehicles. on a warm day, the rich musty smell of manure can whaft a couple of miles with the wind and even in a sealed air conditioned vehicle you can't escape it. i thought, well it will get him reacclimated to texas. there's a hellalotta cattle there.

i can only imagine the interesting characters that might sitting next to him. the snippets of conversation, the junk snack food, the funky little diner in el paso. heh, everything is potential material in my eyes! i'm in the wrong business.

silicon valley fashion accessory #37

bluetooth wireless headsets

subject: mid 40's male silicon valley technocrat, medium build, suited

context: having morning coffee and pastries with female co-workers

faux-pas: wearing his motorola bluetooth headset as if it was a new rolex

what he was thinking: "this is cool, i'm going to impress the ladies"

what his co-workers were thinking: "he looks like a dork with that thing on his ear"

"i was centered"

20:45h sitting out on the back porch with rob and mike watching the trees in the distance

mike: [sitting on the bench, relaxing with a sigh] man, i was centered til i came here tonight.

rob: [chuckles] yeah, me too!

me: heheh, yeah me too!

mike: [another sigh] man, i don't know how you two live with these guys day in, day out. all day long, i'm fine then i come here and it's, it's, awh man... i gotta struggle to keep...

me: [interjecting] hey man, i fight with it everyday...not to let the crack talk get to me. it's why this ipod is so precious. it's my anti-crack talk device!!! hehe

rob: yeah mike, every morning when son and i leave this place we take a couple of minutes to shrug off all the bad noise from all the crack talk and we are generally fine all day. but whenever we start returning to this place, we immerse ourselves in a kind of sick and twisted frame of humor. it is the only way to get by!

mike: [long sigh]

"the largest of storms are announced by a single drop of rain"

little things

it is a beautiful day in the plain sense of it. clear, cool and a cloudless sky. it is the perfect day for me to have a brain fart. or at least realize i have a brain fart as the bus i'm waiting for arrives and i realized i left my bus pass in the jacket i was wearing yesterday. arghhhh... i was not paying attention so this is payment. what a horrible waste of money. i thought of what the cost of a day pass could have bought:

1. many cups of non-starbucks coffee with free refills;
2. half a steamed soy sauce chicken from the asian deli;
3. three dense chocolate cake orbs crusted with chopped chestnuts;
4. several good espresso con panas (properly made, not with the whipped cream out of an aerosol bottle. ok, so maybe i have too much coffee...);
5. six ciabatta rolls (which would be really good with tapenade about now);
6. a yummy bowl of vietnamese pho;
7. one and a half bar of toblerone white chocolate;
8. a quart of creamy full fat organic yoghurt;
9. a copy of shakespeare's sonnets;
10. oh yes, and i can't forget a pound of baby shiitake mushrooms from the farmer's market

so tomorrow...mental note to myself: don't throw out this month's bus pass when i purchase next month's pass. it is still good for the day. but that is another story...

i'm sitting in a cafe this morning and this woman walks over to me and says, "hi, do you remember me?"

this usually under any circumstances is awkward.

half a second later the visuals are matched with some place in my brain. oh it's margot! we used to work together at cks. gee, that was like...ten years ago. i was surprised that she would recognize me. it must have been due to the crazy antics i participated in back then when we worked together. yeah, things like roller hockey in the office, skate-by nerf gun shootings, and the occasional obligatory primal rage bouts at 10:04am with her boss bruce when he was having a bad morning.

anyway, it was good to see her. we exchanged contact info and agreed to get together for lunch or something sometimes.

it was a good way to start the day...

local morning news

conversation that the local morning news foster among my inmates i mean housemates:

- discussion as to a particular sports jock shouldn't be allowed back in the game.*

- the complexities of lying and denial behavior in the michael jackson trial.

- complaints as to the ambiguity of the weather forecast, 50% chance of rain in the morning and possibly in the afternoon as well brings forth the comment "well, what the fuck does that mean? is it going to rain or not? what kind of a weather forecast is that?" [old asian slogan: "man who believe weather forecast voted for bush"]

- "you know it man, you know it man, right?" [yes, i know it is a waste of hot green tea if i throw it in your face before taking a sip. my blood caffeine and polyphenol level is less than .10% stay out of my body schema.]


*i say sports jock as supposed to "athlete." the dictionary defines "athlete" as "A person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility, and endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise or sports, especially those performed in competitive contexts." a sports jock is someone who participates in spectator based activities who drives overly large american made s.u.v.'s and is an unwitting object and platform for advertisement all the while believing that he is being paid large sums of money for his ability to: a) hurl his bacon and barley malt induced abdomen at anything in front of him b) drop his super sized burger created gluteus maximus to the ground while sliding to second base c) flaunt badly designed tattoos on the inside of his biceps thereby exposing his underarm and discouraging any opponent to come within proximity of his olfactory schema and preventing the basketball from being stolen from his possession.

part two soon to be published....

emptiness without proper enclosure

5:20am walking into the kitchen...

why are guys sometimes such fucking idiots?

me: all right, i want to know who is the idiot who peed, didn't raise the seat and can't aim for shit and didn't even have half the decency to flush afterward?

thinking to myself: "i'm gonna beat this person on the head, pull his pants down and duct tape his crotch."

"I will show you fear in a handful of dust." -- T.S. Eliot

sunnyvale starbucks umbrellas

me: "uh, if you have umbrellas that provide shade and protection from the rain...how come they are under the eaves?"

is this something like the narthex of a church?

odanata oniseptera

me trying to integrate ebonics into latin:

me: odonata anisoptera

rob: is he kin to obi wan?

me: obi wan kenobi?

me: he be gone!

me: he be gone to the force!

me: he be so gone to the force you can see right through him!

bits & pieces of the old country

i have a fascination for language, especially those that are not really used much. especially the pretty ones.

so today i started learning how to write in nom which is a more or less dead writing system that used to be in use in vietnam. vietnamese was romanized thanks to the efforts of some catholic missionaries way back when so that christianity could be spread. gee whiz, yet another culture pawed by rome. but that is another story.

i am telling a happy one right now. well, sort of...

beauty is not always pretty, i believe...

i'm learning new ideograms/characters and am excited to write them with a brush. funny thing about ideograms, there is not really room for mispellings. if you misdraw the character, then you may be saying something completely different. well, i suppose it is like the spoken language as well. mess up the inflection and you may be cursing someone's ancestor or something...

--

there was a man sharing his story this morning. and there were parts of his life that held dark troubles for his soul. and i came across this poem today. i can't tell if i went looking for something like this. lately, things just turn up.

Bomb Crater Sky
by Lam Thi My Da


They say that you, a road builder
Had such love for our country
You rushed out and waved your torch
To call the bombs down on yourself
And save the road for the troops

As my unit passed on that worn road
The bomb crater reminded us of your story
Your grave is radiant with bright-colored stones
Piled high with love for you, a young girl

As I looked in the bomb crater where you died
The rain water became a patch of sky
Our country is kind
Water from the sky washes pain away

Now you lie down deep in the earth
As the sky lay down in that earthen crater
At night your soul sheds light
Like the dazzling stars
Did your soft white skin
Become a bank of white clouds?

By day I pass under a sun-flooded sky
And it is your sky
And that anxious, wakeful disc
Is it the sun, or is it your heart
Lighting my way
As I walk down the long road?

The name of the road is your name
Your death is a young girl's patch of blue sky
My soul is lit by your life

And my friends, who never saw you
Each has a different image of your face

Translated by Martha Collins and Thuy Dinh

misery is a butterfly

made my day. well it is a song called "misery is a butterfly" by blonde redhead but it really made my day better. i don't know how to explain but it just is. it is one of those songs that you can't remember the lyrics to or what it's about but you remember how it feels. that is what is important some times.

today came with an overcast sky and droplets of moisture at dawn. it turned into a beautiful day in scotland. hehe...

rob is smoking crack! he really isn't actually, he doesn't need it. that is because he is from texas. we really ought to be planning what we are going to do to dave to make him feel paranoid but we are too busy laughing at the people walking by starbucks who are taking themselves way seriously with their young offspring strapped to the seats of their gas guzzling suv's. oh, we can't forget those who are doing the park, skip and a double latté with nonfat milk too to go either. basically, the slice of the suburban population who do so much to provide me with material to write about not to mention mock.

at the end of each day, i really ought to utter a prayer of gratitude for this rich source of material. they are as abundant here in silicon valley as there are sardines in monterey bay.

small, medium or large. damn it!

waiting in line for a cup of coffee at starbucks. i'm feeling like i need to go to coffee anonymous and confess that i went to starbucks today because there is not another cafe around in the vicinity and because i need to get wifi access immediately. (this particular starbucks doesn't provide free wifi, the network belongs to an adjacent business; most likely case).

anyway, the person in front of me says, "a grande latte please." i'm still waking up because i'm only on my first refill. the thought that races through my head is "starbucks has successfully convinced this person that 'grande' means medium!" how insidious! how terribly fucking linguistically insidious!!! he reminded of me of another occasion when i was at another cafe (an independent one) where there was this silicon valley type engineer in front of me ordering and was having trouble communicating his desired size so he told the barrista that they should use the same "sizes" as starbucks. this jolted me and i blurted out loudly enough, "NO!, small is small, medium is medium, large is large!!!!! why would you want your "sizes" branded? and moreover, why are they branded in different languages using words that don't even work well for designating measure within the set? (articulating terminology that an engineer would understand) and do you even know what the words mean?!!!"

tall is qualitative but not specific. tall in relation to what? what? huh? an espresso cup measured from its base? a pint of beer? a giraffe? tall is an english word, grande is italian and it means "tall, big, heavyset, large, great." what gives? you are going to use two different words that can mean the same thing and it's okay because they are different languages? and what the hell does venti mean? so i looked it up. it means "20," probably referring to 20 ounces as most places size their coffee drinks to 12, 16 and 20 ounce cups. so venti doesn't even mean large! but what the hell, there are poor marketing fooled, blotted people out there who will subscribe to it.

what gets me in the end is i'm not sure which is more insidious, the fact that starbucks has successfully branded sizes or that people are so willing to behave like livestock that they aren't willing to think for themselves. and what really bothers me is a parent who asks their child, "do you want a tall or grande hot chocolate?"

i'm gonna drop you

scene: 5:30am, in the kitchen

dave (he says this whenever rob or i give him a hard time): i'm gonna drop you right where you stand!

then turns and walks away

me: hey dave

turns around and faces me with a quizzical smile on his face. i reach into my pocket and fish for a coin. i grab a penny and hold it out.

me: hey dave, you mean like this?

i flip the coin into the air and watch it fall to the ground. behind dave, rob and ronnie are standing watching. ronnie bursts into a fit of laughter. dave looks at me.

deer in the headlights.

he is just so fun to have around!

mental note to myself: send thank you note to intel for providing badly needed comic relief

two days...

the beginning of two days away from the nuts i affectionately call "co-habitants" (as opposed to vermin). of course there are those i will miss cause i hate it when i am the most sick and twisted person around. i grate on my nerves.

today, i'll get to throw slabs of flesh on a hot grill. ha, it's only salmon! psych!! ok, that is pretty lame. the timing of my caffeine intake was not well regulated this morning. it is now going through funny spurts. probably should switch to maté at this point but seeing as i have no maté that is going to be tough.

friday horoscope

"It's not your imagination. They've been staring at you, and you've been staring back. Think about all those secret smiles you two have exchanged over the past few weeks. It's time to take this thing out for a test-ride."

oh gawd!

--

earlier today:

the morning starts with noise from the tv. cheap tabloid gossip disguised as news. the chatter is followed by relentless superlative expressions and bloated gurgling voices that are empty. empty not in the way the universe is empty but empty in the way hatred is void of introspection. and the subjects range from lacie peterson to the bible, which they all believe to be equally important in the big scheme of things. important in the way that sports celebrities are equated to spiritual leaders. important in the way in the way the jock of the moment is equated to mahatma gandhi.

in the long run, i’ll hold no resentments towards them. they teach me valuable lessons. they remind me i have the choice between toiling in ubiquitous mindless jibberish or reflecting upon the choices that we can, in fact, make.

dave just started laughing hysterically as i walked by and muttered to myself, “stupid people shouldn’t breed.”

--

the pitfalls of using wifi in a public place:

sitting next to you is a cisco technocrat who exhibits antisocial behavior as he is self-important enough to plant himself in the middle of a bench with two tables in front of it. the manner of his placement is sort of the same as the way the old chinese culture sees and calls itself the "middle kingdom" (the character in question is the symbol for "center"). another workable analogy would be the way the catholic church used to insist (with fear of excommunication) that earth was in the center of the solar system.

i would normally not go through such a discourse with the others in my head but after asking twice (politely) if i could scoot in (read: make room [polite form]; move your ass over [vernacular condescend form]) he doesn't even so much as utter a "oh," "sure," or "yes." instead he is too busy looking at his yahoo! financials. if he is so significant, why is he using a free service to track his stock options?

some might say that i have acquired an incredible distate, almost dislike, almost hatred for the technocrats of the high tech economy. it could be true. i will have to contemplate. however, "hate" is such a strong word. as a friend once said, "it takes a lot of energy to hate something or somebody." i think he is right. karmic energy used toward hate is not a renewable resource. it just comes around one day and you find yourself reincarnated as a banana slug!

ah, it makes sense now...il est français! ha!

--

it's just after 5pm. i've survived...

reason #11

sterotypes exist for a reason...because they are really out there!

and in public places are the last optimal venues to discover them. especially when they sit next to you and they won't go away and you really don't want to go away. it is even worse when they like to laugh at anything in a manner that is astronomically more hysterical than it needs to be. reason #11 for why headphones were invented.