(26 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 7

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

I had the munchies and decided that I needed to sate this raging urge before I could go any further on my quest.

-
Live in the moment.

Forget the future; you may not get there.
Instant gratification.

-

(Of course, the irony in all of this was that instead of smoking everything I had then and there, I was saving it all for a later date in another country; I was stumbling around the fringes of Los Angeles trying to find a courier company to deliver my heavenly green in a safe and guaranteed manner, belying my insistence that I forget the future and live in that moment because I might never make it to the future...)
-

The list of items on my munchies wish list was comprised of the following:

A frozen pizza from Ralph’s supermarket.
A Sunkist orange drink and some Pringle’s salt and vinegar potato chips.
Some Dove chocolate.

-
Without much thought, almost as if I were being pulled by a master puppeteer toward Ralph’s, my feet moved involuntarily and with certainty. I was re-focused again and nothing was going to deter me from getting to Ralph’s, buying what I craved, and going to my friend’s apartment to sate this craving.
-

I crossed the street, and that sense of impending accomplishment began to settle over me again.
-

-
The sight of the FEDEX truck in the Ralph’s parking lot was an utter shock to me and I forgot (momentarily) about my munchy cravings. I was too stoned to notice, but I was subliminally becoming irritated at my constant changes of mind and heart.

-
I had all the focus of an ADD patient on speed.
-

I approached the truck cautiously, as if I were closing in on an overseas American consulate that was guarded by machine gun-toting MPs. I was unsure how the driver would react to seeing someone approach him with such a valuable pkg as the one I had in my hand.
-

‘Excuse me’, I said rather timidly, almost daintily, ‘but I need urgently to send this pkg overseas via FEDEX. The Kinko's there across the street cannot help me because I want to pay by cash and they won’t accept cash, only a credit card or FEDEX account number, because they are only a drop-off point. Can you help me?’
-

The FEDEX guy eyed me as professional female porn star would eye a potential suitor with $5.00 in hand and a 2.5-inch penis.
-

‘There’s the FEDEX facility over on Imperial Highway that could help you.’

-
He didn’t seem to grasp that I was only on foot and in no shape to hike over to Imperial Highway, though it was a damn sight closer than the Kinko's on Hawthorne. I tried to explain that going too much further than I had already walked was out of the question, but it was of no use.

-
‘Is there any way I can just pay you to take this pkg and do the necessary things to get it shipped overseas?’ I was pleading.
-

‘I’d like to, but I can’t,’ he said. He actually looked remorseful as he said it, as if I now had $100.00 in hand, but still only swinging 3 inches.
-

I thanked him and walked off. I didn’t know what to do next. It was not my day and it had only just begun; I had a long day ahead of me and already it was a bad one.
-

What did the rest of the day hold for me? My forgetting to pack something? A middle seat on the flight? The plane’s crashing?

-
I had no choice on what to do next except obey my munchy cravings and head into Ralph’s to buy some food.
-

-
As I walked through the automatic opening doors into Ralph’s, the thought occurred to me that I might look ridiculous, even suspicious, walking around with a pkg in my mind. Thankfully, my being stoned lessened my worries; besides, what else was I going to do with it? Stash it somewhere out in the front of Ralph’s in the plants they were selling, or in a shopping cart, or behind a soda machine? I’d been walking around with the pkg in my hand all day long, why should I have stopped then?
-

I walked through Ralph's in a resolute haze. I was sleepy and hungry and really didn't really look forward to walking back to my friend’s apartment. I first went and picked up a large can of Pringle's because it wasn’t temperature-sensitive and wouldn’t melt or ruin if I took my time wandering around Ralph's. I headed to the frozen food section of the store, trying to decide which to buy first, the frozen pizza or the package of frozen Dove chocolate ice cream bars. I was in such deep self-debate about this issue that I walked blindly past the frozen food section without even knowing it. Eventually, I stopped and realized I’d walked past only because I noticed I was in the ‘Personal Hygiene’ part of Ralph's and it was dawning on me that I needed fingernail clippers and I’d been meaning to buy a pair for a couple of weeks.
-

I was irritated to discover that I couldn’t find the clippers, even though I’d been standing in front of where they should have been for nearly five minutes. I couldn’t believe that I couldn’t find them and I cursed trying to find something like nail clippers while under the influence of drugs. The irony that, while stoned, I’d remembered to buy something I’d been forgetting to buy for the past several weeks, yet couldn’t find it, didn't escape me.
-

Finally, I couldn’t take it and I left the nail clippers to go find my pizza.
-

It was insanely easy to find the pizza (Thai Chicken, from California Pizza Kitchen) and ice cream bars and made me wonder about those nail clippers. Maybe the reason I couldn’t find the clippers was because there WERE none; they were sold out! That had to be it and I went back to the ‘Personal Hygiene’ section to check again.

-
I stood in front of the display where the clippers normally were displayed and was half-surprised to find that they still weren’t there. I saw combs, emery boards, bottles of nail polish remover, and other various sundries, but saw no clippers. Down near the bottom of the display, just off of the floor, though, were two empty spaces. I’d seen those spaces a few moments earlier, but had been too lazy to bend down and check them out.
-

I still was not up to bending down and checking more closely, but I knew I’d torture myself for the next few hours if I didn't bend down and check. I took a deep breath and bent down; it was the hardest thing I could ever remember having undertaken. It was as if there were a dozen fifty-pound sacks of sand on my back.
-

I wondered if I’d be able to get back up.

-

(to be continued...)

(25 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 6

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

I walked into Kinko's, relieved and paranoid. I’d made it to my destination (albeit, not the original one) without having been arrested or dispossessed of my pkg, yet was paranoid that everyone was going to notice or already had noticed my being stoned.
-

I asked the counter guy if I could ship my pkg from there, if that was something Kinko's did. He nodded and pointed me to the corner where the FEDEX display was.
-

I went over to the display and found an international waybill. I was elated! The realization that I was close to getting the pkg sent thrilled me and I bent down to fill out the form.
-

I had no pen, however.
-

And there was no pen on the FEDEX display.
-

I felt my pockets and looked around. There was no pen in sight for me to use.
-

A beautiful young woman in a pair of hip-hugger jeans walked into the store, her bare midriff momentarily distracting me.
-

Meanwhile, there was nothing on the floor, nothing on the counter, nothing anywhere, except for a display next to the front counter. It was full of ballpoint pens, the perfect kind needed to press through the carbon paper on the air waybill adequately. I was saved!
-

However, I didn’t want to buy any of those pens. I just wanted to use one of them.
-

I was afraid to ask the counter guy if I could borrow one because I thought he might notice that I was high, or he might make me buy one. I was caught, undecided as to what to do, and felt the honey in the hip-huggers at the counter staring at me as if I were a new species of insect—or so I imagined (wished?).
-

I knew I was bound to attract even more attention if I continued just to stand there, next to the pen display, and not do or buy anything.
-

I tried to think quickly, but that was impossible given the blockage of my mindset.
-

Hell, I tried just to think at any rate of speed, but that, too, was difficult.
-

I realized that I had no choice. I had to pretend that I was interested in buying one of the pens, so I began to take the cap off of some of them and pretended to examine them, nodding as if giving my approval to some, shaking my head as if in disappointment at others.
-

I think I inspected over ten pens, but then, just like my sense of time was then, I’m not sure how reliable my sense of arithmetic was at that time, either.
-

I couldn’t inspect these pens much longer without attracting the dreaded undue attention, so I took a deep breath and did it.
-

I walked over to the FEDEX display with the chosen pen in my hand, as cool as an iceberg (or so I thought), as if I’d been carrying it the entire time.
-

I filled out the form with no incident, which was good because it was the last instance lacking incidents for a few hours.
-

-
I walked to the front counter again, the filled-out form in my hand, ready to be plastered to the box, paid for, and shipped to my destination. I felt illogical, lucid, giddy. The machinations of paranoia had begun to fade because I was on the precipice staring out over my valley of contentment and accomplishment. I was to the point of not caring whether or not anyone noticed that I was stoned.
-

‘I’d like to ship this to -----’, I said.
-

‘No problem’, the clerk replied. ‘Just fill out this section with your credit card information and I’ll be happy to give it to the FEDEX guy when he shows up later today.’
-

The paranoia came crashing back down upon me; my giddiness and lucidity were plundered; my accomplishment was halted in mid-action.
-

Credit card information? There was no way I was sending something illegal across international borders and paying for it in such a way that I could be tracked. Nor did I want to pay with a credit card when the names of the sender (after the founder and CEO of a former dot.com I’d worked for, an ugly man, both in appearance and in mentality, who had cheated many people out of money they had rightfully earned) and the addressee (a pen name I used on occasion when I’ve had a poem published) did not match who I was or the name on my credit card (I was proud at how deftly I’d avoided leaving such a paper trail, even in my altered mindset).
-

Proud though I was at my perceived genius, I still had a potential problem staring me in the face.
-

‘I only have cash. Is that OK?’
‘I’m sorry, but you can only pay with a credit card.’
-

I was stunned. What kind of place was this?
-

‘Why can’t I pay with cash? This is an urgent matter and I need to ship this pkg today.’
“Because this Kinko's is a FEDEX drop-off point only.’
‘What does that mean, a drop-off point?’ I was becoming less and less stoned, which was not a good thing.
‘It means that customers can only pay with credit card or their FEDEX account number and then drop their goods off here for pickup in the afternoon. There is no FEDEX person who works here, like there is at the Kinko's over on Hawthorne.’
-

Hawthorne? Hawthorne Boulevard? It had taken seemingly a week for me to make it from my friend’s apartment to this Kinko's; there was no way I was going to make it to Kinko's on Hawthorne, even if I’d had six weeks to do it.
-

I was beginning to think that this was some sort of evil movie I was starring in, a conspiracy movie where everyone I encountered knew I was stoned, knew what I was mailing, and was in collusion so as to prevent me from doing my duty. They knew that I was near my breaking point, that I was very close to just saying, ‘The hell with it’, and giving up.
-

The fact that I knew they knew, however, is what kept me from losing it, but it took every effort of my numbed mindset.
-

It was in this mindset that I walked out of Kinko's to try and figure out what my next step would be.

-

(to be continued...)

(24 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 5

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

I was really too tired to do it. I was barely a hundred meters away from having left the bus stop when it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be able to continue.
-
I stopped. There was no way I could continue. I thought maybe that I should right then and there turn and walk back to my friend’s apartment and just pass out (but not before toking up on some of that green inside said pkg, of course).
-
I couldn’t go on. I didn’t care about being high the next week; I was scared to death that I was going to fall asleep right then and there on Sepulveda.
-
I didn’t want to go on. I wanted to be weak and I wanted to be laughed at later when I told my pathetic story of being so lazy on this, the day of deliverance and arrival.
-
I wasn’t able to continue.
-
I had to, though. I was a ganja soldier. I had trained for occasions such as this, I was mentally prepared to push myself to the limit, I was going to reap the benefits of my march. I wanted my purple heart for a heroically stoned effort, I told myself I wasn’t going to sleep until my mission was accomplished, I cared very much about being high next week, I needed to save my admissions of laziness for more important instances (though what those were—are—I cannot, even now, begin to imagine), I was going to deliver and arrive.
-
I pushed on again, Kinko’s still my destination.
-

-
I walked past Ralph's, Robek’s, and Starbuck’s. I really wanted some chips or a juice smoothie or a piece of tiramisu, but I was focused. I was becoming a warrior of mythical and smokey proportions. Legends would abound about this heroic deed I was on. I would be in history books on the travails of ganja soldiers. I was the Che Guevara of the ganga revolution organized to step up the pressure on and resist the global occupation being advanced by imperialists on the unsuspecting users of all things green, leafy, smokey, and heavenly.
-
I would be the subject of a major short story by some obscure and unpublished author, or perhaps of a short indie film by some famous Hollywood-type, I would be a character in a Charles Bukowski bit (you know that bastard is still writing his great stories in some other parallel world).
-
There was nothing that could impede my progress toward Kinko's and I knew looked fearsome.
-
-
I stood momentarily at the corner of Sepulveda and Mariposa, stopped by the red street light and my hunger.
-
Western Sizzlin’ stared back at me with inviting eyes, but I ignored its advances and my hunger; I was still on my mission.
-
Of course, in a few minutes, when I left Kinko's, I was going to have to double back the way I had just come and pass again the Sizzlin’ and the other two beckoning eating and drinking establishments that I’d passed just a moment earlier in order to get back to the apartment, which left open the option that I’d stop at all three places for a steak, a tiramisu, and a smoothie.
-

The light changed to green and I crossed the street, not too many steps from Kinko's.

-

(to be continued...)

(23 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 4

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

I sat on the bench and tried to keep grasp of the earth around me. I was flying and fearful that if I didn’t hang on, I was just going to float away. Blurred visions of clear images rushed by, dodging the clear visions of blurred images, much like the scenes in that old arcade game called “Frogger”.

-

I kept looking to my left for the approaching No. 232, but it still wasn’t showing up. I was getting impatient as the laced ganja began really to dig in its talons. I was alternately sure that there was no way I could keep my eyes open and that the cars on Sepulveda couldn’t be going any more slowly.

-

I also began to notice that I was getting the munchies:

-
A cheeseburger from Carl’s Jr. fast food burger joint.
A mango, orange, and strawberry smoothie from Robek’s smoothie shop.
A piece of tiramisu from Starbuck’s coffee house.
A steak from Western Sizzlin’ restaurant.
Pringle’s Salt & Vinegar potato chips and a Sunkist orange soft drink from Ralph's supermarket.

-

(I wondered at something similar in each of those last five thoughts: does every popular eating establishment in SoCal have to have an ‘s in its title? Anyway...)
-

I was practically drooling at this point. All of the above were within a five minutes’ walk from where I sat and I really began to get irritated that the bus hadn’t come yet. I still wasn’t sure I trusted my sense of time, but I knew that I was getting ruffled, nonetheless, from waiting.

-

I looked down at my socks and, without warning, the urgency with which I thought I’d needed socks began to deliquesce. Did I really need any more pairs of socks? Weren’t three or four pair enough for a grown man? And if I really did need socks, did they HAVE to be adidas? And if they HAD to be adidas, wasn’t adidas a global brand that I could get in any country, including the one for which I would be taking off in several hours?
-

I wrestled with this for a few moments. I really wanted adidas socks. I’d had the same style of adidas socks for over a year without having bought any new ones and I’d really been looking forward to buying some new ones with a subtle change in the style. However, it dawned on me that I was being high-maintenance.

-

Who the hell cared about the style or fashion of my damn socks? Why was this an obsessive-compulsive burr under my skin? If I were going to be obsessive-compulsive, why couldn’t it be about porn or something?

-

I was still wrestling with this when two things occurred to me nearly instantaneously: there was a Kinko’s 24-hour copy center nearby and the bus still hadn’t come by.

-

Believe me, these two thoughts were less mutually exclusive than they might at first appear, and gave way to the following equation:
-

If, 1) the damned bus wasn’t going to come by any time in the next millennium, 2) there were a Kinko’s nearby, and 3) I didn’t need to upgrade my adidas socks, then 4) why was I continuing to sit on that bench for no reason?

-

The answer, of course, was easy: the pkg. Today was all about sacrifice and attrition, all for the sake of the pkg and my future, not present, relationship with it.
-

I fleetingly thought, “To hell with it. I’m too damned lazy and I don’t feel like traipsing around the west side of Los Angeles in order to mail something illegal.”

-

I was flying and all I wanted was some munchies and sleep.

-

The thought that Kinko’s was nearby and the fact that in a few days I’d be praising Shiva that I’d paid the band so as to have some music by which I’d later be able to dance made me curse myself for the preceding blasphemous, fleeting though it was, thought of not sending out that pkg.
-

I decided then and there that I needed to get up at that very moment and walk to Kinko’s, where I knew I’d be able to send out the score.

-

I got up and continued my journey.

-

(to be continued...)

(22 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 3

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

As I got to the corner of E. Grand and Sepulveda Boulevards, just a few blocks south of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), bus No. 232, the one I needed, went by across the street, in the northerly direction toward which I was headed. This meant I had about a 15-minute wait before the next one would drive by to get me. I crossed the street when the light allowed me to do so and sat down to watch the traffic and imagine that I was being watched by every passing car.

-

Los Angeles is not a place where people walk or take the bus too much. Public transportation isn’t good for one’s image, but I had no image to protect and was stoned, so I really didn’t care; I had other cares on that day.

-

However, I knew what I must’ve looked like to some of the passersby as I walked down the street with a package in my hand. I didn’t fancy myself as not attracting attention; on the contrary, as I sat there on the bench awaiting the bus, the thought began to enshroud me that I was going to attract the wrong kind of attention. A man with a shaved head and sunglasses on a cloudy day walking in an area near LAX with a package in his hand might not go over well, especially in light of the heightened security in recent months and the paran(n)o(ying)id propaganda that had forced Congress to pass that goddamned USA PATRIOT Act—which granted law enforcement to arrest and harass anyone they deemed to be “acting suspiciously” or for suspecting that one was acting or going to act suspiciously; if I’d been born with darker skin, I’d have really been even more paranoid than I was making myself.

-

Then, I began to think about what the bus driver or bus patrons might think when they saw me with this pkg in my hand. I thought that they might wonder why I was riding a bus with an opened pkg in my hand. With all the recent stories about suicide bombs in the Middle East and the ruling class-led paranoia that anyone with a pkg on a bus was intent upon blowing it up (it probably didn’t help, either, that I was, in Israel-loving LA, wearing a ‘FREE PALESTINE’ t-shirt), I was beginning to get nervous as I thought about these things. Precisely the last thing I wanted was attention and someone’s snooping around my pkg. While there certainly was nothing explosive or dangerous in the box, things were going to be explosive for me if the wrong people discovered what was in my box.

-

In my mind, I raced ahead to the future and imagined my sitting on a park bench, empty-piped and sober, cursing myself for having been careless the week before in mailing my goods. Despite the fact that I’d convinced myself that I was going to be caught, I knew I had to forge ahead and do the deed. Taking the chance of getting caught and serving time for possession outweighed the sitting, knowing, and self-excoriating, a week later, that I’d be doing because I’d made a lazy attempt to send into my future the tools to unlock my mindset and enhance the colors of my hallucinations-to-be.

-

It seemed like an interminable amount of time had passed since the last bus had lurched by. However, trying to gauge time while in that state, I knew, was about as effective as square tires. I figured that it’d probably been not even five minutes since I’d sat down and I laughed at my flying mind’s trying to comprehend and calculate the vagaries of time.

-
(to be continued...)

(21 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 2

The Pkg

(continued from before)

As you may have read in another story about me, I am fond of buses. I have done lots of traveling and have often lived and worked abroad, where buses have been one of my main modes of travel.

It was for the nearest bus stop that I bounded down the steps on that fateful Los Angeles morning. It was the usual sunny L.A. April day as I realized how stoned I was. I really liked the fact that it was, at that point, barely just 9am. “Wake-and-bake” was a catch phrase that needed to be trademarked and copyrighted (like Pat Riley’s “Threepeat” phrase from the NBA's Los Angeles Laker teams of the 80s), or whatever the hell it is that one does to register one’s clever idea with the government, since Bacchus knows one couldn’t have his or her own free and original thought without the government’s putting its unwelcome nose where it didn’t belong so it can claim its share of its citizens’ fortunes.

I walked down the street in a fog, completely oblivious to the box in my hand, the warming sun, traffic, reality. I was flying and invulnerable. I walked with a spring, an ignorance, an imagined smile on my face. In my mind, I could see my smile, which made me imagine I was smiling at the thought that I was smiling.

All of which made me paranoid, another good sign that I was high.

My plan had been that I would take the bus, with the help of one transfer, into Santa Monica where I could check my mail from my rented postal box and send out my pkg. It wasn’t necessary that I go to the same place where I had a postal box, but I also had to do a little shopping on the 3rd Street Promenade at the adidas store; I needed socks and adidas was the only place that I could ever find decent ones. I thought it’d be rich to ride the bus and shop the Promenade while stoned on my last day in Los Angeles.

Things didn’t go quite according to plan, as you’ll soon find out, however.

(to be continued...)

(20 ramadhan 1426) serial times

The Pkg

Then

It was a Wednesday morning in southern California when I woke up with a mouth as dry as desert cotton and my mind as clear and structured as reindeer diarrhea.

To be precise, I was in El Segundo, CA, which is a beachside suburb of the zillions of suburbs that comprise greater Los Angeles; El Segundo is just south of Playa del Rey, next to Marina del Rey, which is tucked next to Venice Beach, which is just under Santa Monica, which borders west Los Angeles; all of the coastal suburbs blend together into the big mirage that is Los Angeles, even when one is sober.

I had a long day ahead of me, one that would see me end the day (and skipping Thursday) arriving at my destination on Friday on another continent halfway around the world, so I rolled off the couch onto the floor and crawled over to the coffee table where I grabbed and took a hit from the still-moist bud tucked into the bowl of a pipe.

It was a “wake-and-bake” Wednesday, as my buddy, Y, would have called it. Wake up and bake yourself in the leafy wonders of a still-packed bowl from the night before.

I needed a bake badly because I had a long and stressful day ahead of me, to which I believe I’ve already referred.

The clock next to my couch read 8:13 Pacific Daylight Time. It seemed that it would be my day because the sum of the numbers in the time displayed equaled a number divisible by 3, which was something of a superstition of mine. Any number—whether it was a ball score, a price, mileage on a road sign, time, the day’s date, the alphanumerical sum of the letters in one’s name—divisible by the number 3 I considered as a signal of impending good karma. I’d learned this mathematical fact—any number whose sum of its digits was evenly divisible by 3 meant that the number itself was also divisible by 3—in elementary school and it was something I’d thought so fascinating that I decided instantly that all numbers divisible by 3 were going to my benign superstitious quirk, the number 3 itself, of course, being the number one fortuitous number.

I puffed on my pipe and thought of my insanity with numbers. I wondered if other people had such stupid little quirks; I wondered if my friends would want me committed if they ever found out such a thing about me. I smoked and thought more about this while I took the biggest bud from inside the sandwich bag and set it aside for the rest of the day’s use.

As I think I’ve said before, I had a long day ahead of me and needed something to help me keep an even keel, so my attention to and needs of the present took precedence to the needs of the coming future.

I rolled up the bag inside which the remaining ganja resided and Scotch-taped the bag so that nothing could intrude upon the contents therein. I went over to the box in which I’d be sending the marijuana. Inside the box lay the tools and paraphernalia that I needed to use in order to the escape the suspicious eyes of the vigilant Customs officials on both sides of this mail exchange (unfortunately, reader, I can’t divulge these secrets on the off-chance that some of the law enforcement personnel around the world can actually read. If my secrets of sending marijuana from the United States to myself in another country were ever exposed, I’d obviously not have any of that wonderful Cali Jamaican Red to aid me through any given day).

I finished my packing job about a half hour later, all the while inhaling a huge dent into that last big bowl, potentially the last bowl I’d be having for a long while, depending upon whether or not my pkg made it to me. I looked at the clock again, which now read 8:52, another number divisible by 3 and the second one of the day. I smiled to myself at this.

I might have mentioned already that I had a long day ahead of me, and I thought about how nice it was that the long day was going to be full of good luck.

(to be continued...)

19 ramadhan 1426

it's october on the east coast of korea, so the leaves must be a-changin'

though it is a korean cliche to say it, autumn here on the peninsula, especially on the east coast near the mountains, is a time for splendid colours as the leaves change from their summer of rich green to the bright electricity that is a myriad of oranges, reds, yellows, and everything in between. as cliche as it is--and as much as it's impossible to find a place here that isn't being run over with dumbasses from all over (but especially from seoul) who would run over their deathbed-ridden mother in order to get a simple look at the same colours that they saw last year just so they can go back to work on monday and brag to their co-workers over their afterwork soju that this year's colours were the most spectacular in the history of northeast asia--it is beautiful to climb about 850 meters on a two-lane road (intead of taking the super-convenient expressway)up into the mountains directly overlooking gangneung and see the valley below, all the way to the sea and beyond, in all its splendor: i can only imagine what it looks like when all covered with snow and will endeavour to post such a phot o in this very aetherspace as soon as it becomes possible to do so...

anyway, as much as i suppose it wouldn't be much of an autumn in korea if one didn't light up the camera with photos of the changing leaves, i also suppose it wouldn't be much of a week in the cyber world if one didn't receive an email of the following ilk:

Hello, my friend.

My name is Tobias, and I am a Nigerian scam artist. I just wanted to get that out in the open before we begin. Your rich uncle has just…What is that? You have no rich uncle? What I meant to say is that you have won an internet lottery. Yes, that is right, 10 million Euros, you have won it before no? Oh, you are not an EU citizen… You have never even been to Europe? Ok let me begin again.

Dear sir. I princess Imelda, hair aparent (please be excusing I cannot spell Heir or Apparent) of Wankaslovakia wish to copulate with you greatly. Sorry I am meaning "Cooperate" with you greatly. I am needing a moron, I mean, motivated individual willing to help me defraud a country of starving peasants, of 10 million US dollars. Simply send me your credit card details, (there is the matter of a minor 5000 dollar fee) and I will send you back fuck all. Sorry, what I am meaning is Bill Gates will track the email personally, and he will send you back fuck all.

No, no, no, no! My, this English can be quite vexing. Please be ignoring my poor English, and the fact that my email address is an entirely different name from who I purport to be. Bill Gates be my homeboy, we have been scamming you fuc… Oh, I am wishing I had not taken that sodium pentothal before writing.

Jesus this stuff is strong! Infact, there is no Wankaslovakia, and my name is not really Imelda… No, shit, I can't stop myself. I spend all the money you send me on petrol for my Lexus and cheap whores.Noooooooooooooooooooo!

Please be forwarding this letter to your grandparents, the mentally ill, and the reality illiterate so that I may defraud them of their life savings.

Sincerely,

Tobias Fuckknuckle

to which i wrote the following response in order to combat these evil minions with some of my own scaremongering tactics that these scam artists so deserve:

dear tobias...

my name is grammar manmeat and i am a 35-year-old blue-haired idiot savant garde-ian angel from key largo, just north of the irish keys (no relation to the keys lying in a heap on the floor of my kitchen...)

i am happy to get your email, but i must admit that i have problems with some of the spelling and grammar errors in your email. my mummy and daddy were open-sphinctered english teachers at the local whorehouse/haberdashery and, thus, christened me with the name, "grammar", and glistened me, as well, with some of their bodily juices during their thrice-or-more-nightly pipe-cleaning/oral english sessions. i have just come into a large sum of money, which i inherited my from recently-deceased parents, so please exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxcuse me if my fingers seem to catch on the keyyyyyyyyys from time to time, as my finnngeeeers are still a bit sticky. once iiiiiiiii separate the bbbills from onnnnnne another, i'll be abbble to take all the moneeeeeey to the bank and wire it to you, because yyyyyyyyyyouuuuuuuuuu seem to need it more than iii do.

your email has struckkkkkkkkk a soft spot in my heart (and caused some sticky spotsss on my moneyy) and i don't believe your lies of yourrrrr wannntingggggg to defraud a country of starving peasants. i can seeeee in your letttter that you are a kind-heaaaarrrrted soul who wants nothing but the best for his/her country and ffffor the citizens of this cold, vacuous, and selfish world. i'd verrry muchhh like to help you and, sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo, i have a proposition for you:

if you agreeeeeeeee to marry me and be my idiot slag, i'll deposit in any agreeeeeeable orifice all the manmeat you could hope to slobber over, in your bank account all the money you could hopppppe to lick, and into your nearly empty aptitude for english all the grammar you could hope to absorb and use efficiently.

please take some time ttttttttttttttttttto mull over my considerate and comely offer and i can save you from your life of de(pro)stitution and infamy. i could help transform your emails into works of (sm)art for the sole purpose of extracting from manpipes all that you so richly deserve instead of trying so hard to pretend you're trying to extract monnnnnnnnnney from the ignorant and lonely.

yours in true savant garde-ian angelhood...

grammar manmeat

it is my sincere belief that we not give in to these people who would try to steal our money, to pilfer our bank accounts, to make off with our savings, and heist our insurance premiums, all in the name of taking first-world money and spreading it upon the less-needy denizens of the third world. we need to keep the money for ourselves here in the upper crust, in the more "civilized" part of the world, and not give in to the cyber-terrorism that slinks its way into our daily emails and scuppers our imperialistic self-esteem, our narcissistic cradling of the world's natural resources for our own necessary usage, and our self-indulgent evangelising in the name of western civilisation, capitalism, jesus, joseph, and sweet mother mary.

thus, i propose that we all send such letters as the one from "grammar" to all of these third-world hooligans in an effort to put an end to all of this global harrassing.

call it "pre-emptive emailing..."

12 ramadhan 1426

“there are no facts, only interpretations.” --friedrich nietzsche

the ol' nihilist himself, weighing in, as only he could, on a subjective analysis of the above directive often found in the only bar worth a damn here in gangneung, bumpin'...

according to this quote from nietzsche, there is not room for objectivity in life, only subjectivity--and what one sees from a certain perspective at a given time in a given situation.

as we plod through ramadhan, let's speak for a quick moment on fundamentalism and its relevance with religion.

it would seem, on the surface, that religious fundamentalism would be at odds with nietzsche's assertion; yet, an examination--and it doesn't even have to a deeper one--makes it clear that nearly all religion is subject to this, as i've dubbed it, "friedrich's irrefutable law of existence."

if you disagree, then how do you explain the sects of islam and christianity that claim to follow literally the words of the quran and bible, respectively, as opposed to other parts of each respective religion that follow the alleged hallowed words of each book either with different literal viewpoints or with more tolerant, less "literal" point of view? which interpretation is the most correct? well, people die every all over the world in defense of these points that are more correct than the points against which they're fighting.

there are nearly no occasions in one's life where something isn't a fact, but only subject to one's interpretation of what is seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted, or sensed. because there are not two organisms on earth engineered in the exact same way, every sense is open to debate or discussion, open to subjectivity or interpretation--nothing is bound to the truth, to being a fact, to being the literal version of anything with no chance of its being anything else but that ONE thing.

i don't know about you, but this certainly makes life exciting, doesn't it? it opens one's eyes and puts interpretations of other cultures--as well as interpretations of one's own--into a different light, eh?

06 ramadhan 1426

if the following makes no sense to you, then may this photo serve as your guide as to why...

the other day, i was sitting in bumpin', my favorite bar here in gangneung, and i was having a conversation with a rather belligerent and obnoxious bottle of jim beam.

i was explaining to it/him/her the vagaries of ramadhan; i was elaborating on my disdainful contempt of organized religion and my religious adherence to belittling this organization of slavemasters and mind-controllers; i was elucidating the correlation between a flame's slow but tasteful disintegration of the smoky tobacco leaves of a fine cigar and organized religion's slow but distasteful disintegration of the smoky lustiness that is the human libido, spirit, and soul; and how choosing an organized religion unto which one devotes his or her life is akin to choosing the direction of one's politics or the (lack of) depth of one's social awareness, how similar and intertwined, in fact, religion and politics are and how one's choice of religious belief could be as much a statement of one's politics or social beliefs as one's choice of politics is of one's religion.

it was in the midst of my ever-burgeoning soliloquy that ol' jim interrupted me and reminded me that there is but one deity toward which one must pledge one's everlasting love, upon which one's hope for eternal happiness and one's loathing of eternal damnation rests, and for which one must always raise one's eyes, glass, mind, loins, soul, lust, and thirst: bacchus.

i must admit that my conversion to islam several years ago was as much a retaliation for the west's disgracefully racist, imperialistic, and condescending attitude toward islam and the middle east, as well as toward the rest of asia and all of africa and south america. it was, in a sense, a move made for social and political reasons as for anything else, seeing as how my aforementioned scorn for all organized was at that point beginning to pass into full bloom.

thus, it rang in my skull like a telephone on hemorrhoids my glass friend's comment that i needed only pay heed to the god of wine, debauchery, and good times and reminded me of the good ol' days when i was more laid back, content with life and the human species alive on this planet, more good-natured and fun-loving, and less reticent. i was reminded at how the balance of seriousness and levity in my life had been seriously breached in favour of being much too grim and heavy. it seemed that i, too, had been pulled into that vacuum where the evil minions who control organized religion wanted me, into that void of human existence where all is one, some, or all of the combination of the following: being judgmental and/or arrogant, lacking love, forgetting lust and carnal desires in favor of rancor and self-control, overlooking the deliquescence of relationships, ignoring the saudade of longing that makes one feel alive, and being constantly ashamed or feeling guilty for the basic of human desires, longings, and thoughts--none of which are wrong at the basic core of humanity.

it is surprising to many, even to those who know me fairly well, when they discover that i am moslem because for most of the year, i act as much like a stereotypical moslem as do a gaggle of prostitutes passing out condoms at the local pork chop market.

however, that's part of the point: to explode the myths of what people in the so-called "civilized" world have of those "uncouth" moslems. in truth, i've met on my travels people from the heartland of islam, people who are, on the basis of their skin colour and nationality, stereotypical moslems, yet who were anything but. it was THEY, these moslems from moslem countries with islamic traditions going back centuries, who exploded my own stereotypes not as much of what a moslem resembled, but how (s)he felt, acted, thought, or did in their private times. true, for the most part, these were people who had moved away from their native lands because of their disdain for how their countrymen and -women acted, or because they disagreed with social or political policies, or because they had been touched by the kinky finger of bacchus (or his henchman, pan), so they might not have been truly representative of their countries, but, then again, i'm certainly no barometer by which to measure the average american...

to which i can say, "thank bacchus for that..."

so, the next time you find yourself being sucked into organized religion, "think bacchus...".

when you're losing the balance between enjoying life and thumping the nearest bible or koran, "be bacchus...".

when you're contemplating the neighborhood church or mosque over the local pub, "drink bacchus...".

in the next episode of "calmyhungover", we'll discuss combining one's bacchanalia with one's principles and knowing by which priniciples to stick and which ones to abandon for their irrelevance--and how each is related to bacchus, his (lack of) principles, and when to seek wine and wooing when one thinks one wants to seek ire and irracibility...

01 ramadhan 1426

emin mosque and minaret, near turpan, xinjiang province, in chinese-occupied uyghurstan

some of you might be surprised to learn that i am moslem. there are probably varying reasons for why people would be surprised to learn this about me, not the least of which is that i don't look "moslem", whatever that means. however, it is those of you who know me fairly well that will be surprised to learn that i am a moslem since my unhidden disdain for organized religion of any sort is well-known.

i will get into all that at a later moment, but for now i want to announce to anyone and everyone that today, in northeast asia, thursday, october 6, 2005, by the Western calendar, is ramadhan 1, 1426. when the eighth month of the islamic calendar --which goes by lunar observance--ends, ramadhan officially begins the morning after the official sighting of the new moon, which in the case of me here in korea is today. in some parts of the world--including most countries on the arabian peninsula (oman will start a day later) and in some other asian countries--ramadhan started on tuesday. in other parts of the middle east, asia, europe, australia, and north america, ramadhan began yesterday, wednesday.

ramadhan is about a month-long period of cleansing the body and undergoing a semblance purification by fasting. every day during this period, from about 30 minutes before sunrise until just after sunset, moslems are expected not to eat or drink anything--and to abstain from sex. even though it is a small act of self-sacrifice, the intention of this fasting is to experience just a small amount of the suffering that so many people around the world endure because of poverty, hunger, famine, persecution, torture, imperialistic encroachment upon lands, culture, and ideology.

one is permitted to have sex and eat or drink anything at any time from sunset to about a half-hour before sunrise, and some people really party it up during these night hours, which is why there are quite a few people who gain demonstrable weight during this month of fasting.

i am not a great moslem follower, for varying degrees of reasons of my own choosing, some of which could be discussed in coming days and weeks, but i always take ramadhan as seriously as i can because it helps me, personally, to focus on what is important to me, to be more aware of what is going on around me, and to understand--if ever so slightly--some of the unjust and unfortunate plights of people the world over.

ramadhan kareem to everyone!

doin' time

rising up into the misty rain of lushed insouciance

every so often in a person's life of cycles, there comes a point where one realizes that his or her head is in the clouds and that he or she has lost focus on what is, in his or her circumferential reality, that which is true.

one sees "so-called" friends fuck over another friend--all in the name of dumbfuckness, absence of fraternal honour, and hope of getting in a chick's panties--and wonders about his choices. why do we choose the friends we choose? we are what we eat, so one saying goes, but we are also who we choose to befriend, as another saying goes. in the course of one's life, one is apt to take on scores of different countenances, viewpoints, preferences, partners, skins, responsibilities, wants, needs, lusts, desires, guises, diseases, fashions, chores, challenges, and friends...

each of these things that we take on while meandering the torturous path of life is indicative of that which lies deep within us, within our hearts broken by expectation, in our souls diminished by fear or enlightened by love, on our shirt sleeves of anger, in our eyes wild with delight, over our skin trembling with vengeance or lust, around our aura wobbling with anticipation. they are, by all accounts and in different points on the revolution of the circle, inclusive of betrayal and iniquity, faithfulness and honour, commitment and responsibility, libertine behaviour and judgmental prudeness, deceit and honesty, courteousness and aggressiveness, arrogance and humility, selflessness and narcissism, bad judgment of fashion and good judgment of character.

we see our friends do something well or respectful or honourable or funny or smart or insanely cool, it reflects back on us and it makes us feel good about about ourselves and we congratulate ourselves on making good choices, for being such a good person, for being bright enough to relate to what just happened. when we see a friend do something stupid or embarrassing or dishonourable or disgusting or menial, we are ashamed because it reflects back on us and it doesn't make us feel good about ourselves, we admonish ourselves as to why we chose this person as our friend, for being a dumbass to associate with such a dumbass. however, as true friends, we buck up and accept it and try to limit the valleys and peaks that we inevitably want to feel and that are so natural for us to emote.

it is when our "friends" do things to break the trust, when they cross the line of respect, when they blur the line of confidence and trample publicly on what was thought to be the integrity of the relationship that the relationship breaks down and we wonder what happened to our reality, to what we thought was right and true. it is a major disappointment and can waver one's belief in oneself and the others around him or her thought to be close and trustworthy. and such negative energy doesn't always have to happen directly to us; it can happen indirectly, such as to a close friend--in fact, witnessing it happen to someone else close to you in both a blessing and a curse: a blessing in that since it didn't happen to you, you probably have more of an ability to step back and take it all in objectively and learn from it more unfetteredly; a curse in that, in all reality, what was done to this friend was done by people whom you also considered friends and that has a tendency to wake up one up as one would be awoken by electrical prod into one's most sensitive orifice(s).

all in all, though, it comes ultimately down to choices we make, honesty, remaining committed to that which we pledge to those who depend on those pledges, and respect. one should always have respect for other entities, but one should hold a special respect for those whom we've chosen to be friends because there is something more unique there, a bond that deserves a higher level of respect, a chance for choice to be close to that which we don't always get with our families. unfortunately, respect is an item that, these days, is more and more vacant in the people's lives and item without which people seem to live without much remorse for not having it.

anyway, of course one occasionally--even frequently--has to change the choices that have been made, has to alter the commitments proferred, take a different path of honesty because of the gray area called "life's unpredictability" and "universal nonlinearity"; it would be unrealistic always to deny that changes can't be made and aren't going inevitably to arise at (in)convenient moments, but one has to be aware of these changes, one has to be aware of how much these changes are going to affect not only him or her, but those around him or her, the ones, as stated above, who were depending on the previously-tendered commitment.

should one's thinking change, should one want to back out of any said commitment, should one never have been serious in honoring said commitment, then one should have the fortitude and respect for others to voice these new intentions, to give warning so that the others around who were somewhat (or wholly) dependent on the former commitment can be made aware of the changes so that they can deal with accordingly and also seek a new path for themselves. it goes without saying that there are some people who are aware enough of themselves and all that goes on around them to distance themselves even if there is no warning given, but this warning should still be given out of respect for people and for Life itself.