Get It Together

Holy crap...

Have three weeks passed since I last wrote anything?  Is that possible?  My apologies reader(s) but it couldn't be helped.  I've sat down to write at least half a dozen times and nothing came out.  Today I realized it's due a shock and awe campaign life has staged.  I don't want to say it's been some kind of metaphysical plot against me, because nothing that's happened has been especially shattering.  It just seems like a conflagration of odd events has cropped up around me, and I couldn't find a way to discuss them on their own.

I spent a week in Europe since I last spoke.  The strangeness started there.  Luckly, most of the oddities were generally amusing.  For example, at breakfast in Germany I watched as one of my Vietnamese hosts spooned a taste of butter into his mouth from the pad on his plate.  Nothing especially unusual there.  What was odd was he then spooned half of what was left into his coffee, stirred it up and slugged it down.  This was not a fresh cuppa either.  It was a half-empty, half-chilled cup o' joe.  The next morning my roommate* announced that he would not be heading downstairs to partake of the enourmous breakfast buffet.  He said he found Western food too salty for his taste and he preferred to boil water in the room and eat ramen noodles.  Read that sentence again.  A breakfast of eggs, bread and meat tubes is too salty in comparison with a cup of noodles.  I had been living all this time with the notion that a cup of noodles was the single saltiest food known to man.  My pleas that we were sitting in Lyon, France, home of one of the world's richest culinary traditions fell on deaf ears as he called the buffet waiter over to replenish his stock of hot water.

*Yep... We had roommates on a business trip.  I wish I was kidding.  The first couple nights were pretty easy due to my jet lag and long days spent wandering around a trade show, but when I was forced to stay in a room with another guy suffering from sleep apnea things got significantly more difficult.

Watching the Vietnamese guys struggle with western culture shock was really interesting.  I was struck at how easy it's been for me to talk about my own realizations when confronted with cultural anomalies.  I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking about how difficult it would be for a person born and raised in Vietnam to live in the west.  When you have always eaten noodles or rice for breakfast, then suddenly find yourself without that stuff, it's tough.  His cup of noodles was his comfort food, much like Americans bringing granola bars to Asia.  I found myself standing on the edge of that most western of thougth patterns.  He brought his own food because he's simple and "doesn't know any better."  The simple fact is that I lived on Sweet & Salty granola bars when I traveled to China for the first time.  We're the same when it comes to dealing with traveling to new and strange cultures.  I admit I took a small amount of pleasure watching them struggle with things I consider normal simply because we struggled so madly when we were adjusting to life in Asia.  I am human after all.  It was also bizarre to find that I was having a deeper Vietnamese cultural immersion while standing in Mainz, Germany than I ever had in Vietnam.  Sad, and a little embarrassing, but true.
I also saw this:

This is werid right?  A fictional beer brand based on a cartoon television show in America coming to life in a French advertisement?  Is that normal?  Sadly I didn't get to taste La Biere D'Homer Simpson while I was in Europe.  I wonder when Duff Beer will make it's way to Vietnam?  Oh wait... Never.  It is nice to see that "Woo-hoo" trancends the language barrier like a smile or a laugh.

Moving on.

I'm not generally the type to get all rubbery when celebrities die, but I have been affected by the death of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys.  I even feel silly writing it down, but there it is.  I suppose when you spend your entire life (or at least from the time you were eleven until you were thirty-five) listening to a band, and then they stop existing suddenly it's hard.  I remember lying on the floor in my brother's room listening to his License to Ill cassette on his XBS boom box in 1987.  We made repeated efforts to make the "MMMM DROP" bass hit as floor rumbly as possible.  When I listen now I think, "there's not much actual bass there" but that wasn't the point back then.  I remember going to my friend Justin's house and having him show me how if you hold the album cover up to a mirror, the number on the tail of the plane reads "EAT ME."  I remember listening to Paul's Boutique on the library CD player during a free period. Rocking out to Stand Together in my basement bedroom while my grandmother died a slow and painful death from breast cancer less than ten feet away upstairs..  Until MCA died, I hadn't given much thought to how much of my formative youth played out to the soundtrack of the Beastie Boys.  The world got a little less awesome with the passing of Adam Yauch*.

*I hate the expression "passing" and now I'm hating myself for writing it.  He DIED.  Grandmothers say "he passed."   "He passed" sounds a little too much like "he passed gas" for my comfort.  Sad things and funny things shouldn't be so closely linked.  And let's face it -farting is ALWAYS funny. 

So that was sad and shocking.  Then I woke up this morning to read that Tom Gabel, singer with one of my all time favorite bands, Against Me, is starting sexual rassignment therapy.  If you'd told me ten years ago when I first started listening to them that the singer would eventually come out and announce he'd always thought he was meant to be a woman I would have laughed.  I guess it just goes to show that it's impossible to know what's going on in someone's head.  The guy that wrote this:

You watched in awe at the red,
White, and blue on the fourth of July.
While those fireworks were exploding,
I was burning that fucker
And stringing my black flag high,
Eating the peanuts
That the parties have tossed you
In the back seat of your father's new Ford.
You believe in the ballot,
Believe in reform.
You have faith in the elephant and jackass,
And to you, solidarity's a four-letter word.
We're all hypocrites,
But you're a patriot.
You thought I was only joking
When I screamed "Kill Whitey!"
At the top of my lungs
At the cops in their cars
And the men in their suits.
No, I won't take your hand
And marry the State.
now says he's battled gender dysphoria for "years."  How is that possible?  How can a guy whose spent the entirement of his adult life yelling secretly want to be a woman?  I don't have a problem with this development, it's just surprising to me.  I'm all for people doing what they feel they must to be happy.  Plus I'm a pinko commie liberal.  I love the gays.  They should all get married and adopt babies or have their own if they can.  This just seems totally out of left field.  I mean sure, he also wrote this:

If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman.
My mother once told me she would have named me Laura.
I would grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.
One day I’d find an honest man to make my husband.

but for whatever reason, those lyrics never struck me as out of place.  Besides, it's only one song out of a hundred that mentions it.  Doesn't exactly scream "I am uncomfortable in my own skin."  Not to mention that I saw the song as being environmental and the verse as some kind of metaphor I didn't understand.  I never realized that he was talking about himself.  I applaud his bravery in making the announcement in such a public way.  I wish her all the best in her new life.  On the weirdness scale, this totally beats drinking coffee with butter.

So that's the weirdness as pertaining to people I don't know.  Yesterday I was riding in the car to work when one of my coworkers asked me if I knew "Shelagh."  When I said yes, she then asked if I'd looked at my email.  I admitted I hadn't since I had to get up extra early to catch the ride to work.  Well apparently Shelagh went to sleep on Tuesday night all cozy in her bed.  Unbeknownst to any of us, including her, a blood clot began a nefarious journey from her leg to critical parts unknown.  She never woke up.

We're not talking about a 68 and-a-half year old lady quietly enjoying retirement in an exotic destination.  We're talking about a co-worker who wasn't much more than a few years older than me.  A lively and vibrant woman.  My response was pure Mallrats, "She's fucking DEAD?!"  How can people be fine one evening and dead the next morning?  It's not fair.  And why does it seem to be happening to people I like?  Why can't Paris Hilton die of some flesh rotting disease?  Why can't Kim Kardashian take a stray bullet in the base of the skull?  No, we lose awesome people like Shelagh and are forced to endure thirty years of Jimmy Buffet songs about pirates.  There really is no justice in the world.

When I arrived in the office this morning I learned that yet another one of my friends was fired last night.  I talked to him yesterday and everything was normal, or as normal as it can be in this bizzaro company.  Apparently they called him at 8:00 while he was out of town on assignment for work and told him his services are no longer required.  When my time comes I wonder who will deliver the news?  Will it come like a night stalker and take away my livelihood without warning?  There's no way to know, and that's how I think they like it. 

But I'm doing fine, even after getting sick on yet another holiday, throwing my back out and being confined to the couch for two days last week.  The saddest part about those events was that my sparkly new bicycle had to sit in the corner unridden for an entire week.  On Sunday I thought, "back pain be damned" and took it out.  I'm having a blast riding in the traffic.  And yes, I ALWAYS wear a helmet.  Parents: you should always wear a helmet too.   Don't be that parent that goes bare headed and makes their kid wear a helmet.  Everyone I know that's had a horrible, face wrecking bicycle accident has done it while riding less than 10mph.  Your kid's helmet won't do much good when you're a drooling vegetable*.

* Top Three Things That Give Me Homicidal Thoughts in Vietnam

3.  People riding motorbikes the wrong way on crowded streets.
2.  Motorbikes honking impatiently at you while you're walking on the sidewalk because they want to use the sidewalk to bypass traffic in the street.
1.  Parents who don't wear helmets but force their kids to.  1A would be parents who don't wear helmets and don't force their kids to either.  At least you can all be brain dead together.  It's a small thing.  Heads are important.  And considering Reyna got hit on her motorbike yesterday (she's fine -things have been so strange around here that didn't even make the cut) you never ever know what's around the corner.  Might as well err on the safe side, right?

So I think I'm back on the blog horse.  Sorry to those confused few who actually read my disorganized and incoherent ramblings.  I already know what I'm going to write about tomorrow.  I'm resisting the urge to go there now.  How's that for a cliffhanger?  I'm back!