A short while ago I wrote a post about a stranger that I welcomed to stay with me when she had nowhere else to stay and found herself in some trying times. This stranger turned out to be an amazing person. She has since left us to pursue her dreams wherever they lead her, and for now they have led her to Portland, Oregon. I received a letter from her today which I’d like to share with you.

It’s not everyday that I get to feel how I felt today reading this letter.  It’s not everyday that I get to feel and know that an action I took to help someone would inadvertently help another person just a few months later in the same way. I can only hope that this Israeli adventurer soon finds herself in a situation where she can repay the gesture to someone else.  Pay it forward. We miss you JoMarie.

The other morning when I was letting Maxine out, I noticed a Plover on the driveway.  Although I’ve seen plenty of Plovers in my adventures on the island, I had yet to see one on my driveway.  In fact I rarely ever see them around my hood except for on rooftops on very windy days.  They hang out mostly in open fields and right by the ocean. So seeing one on my driveway was a little surprising.  When I went out to greet it, it hardly moved, which was a clear indicator that something was wrong.

Serving Hard Time

Shiraki was out and about so I enlisted his help in trapping it in the grass under a laundry basket he was using to protect his rotting Camaro from the rain (yes what is essentially a bucket with holes is protecting one of his five cars from the elements). We then fashioned a box with a towel, jar lid full of electrolyte laced water,  and left it out of the wind and somewhere dry.  I then proceeded to call the Wild Bird Rehab Haven which had an answering message saying that they were at capacity.  I wasn’t sure what to do next, but luckily someone on Twitter suggested that I call the humane society because they will pick it up since it’s in fact a federally protected species.

Animal Ambulance or Meal On Wheels, You Decide

So I did just that, and an hour or so later the animal ambulance came to pick up the bird. The Animal EMT said it looked like a cat had attacked our feathered friend. In the interim I had emailed the Bird Haven people because an online article published in 2007 said their answering message had said they were at capacity for a few months and I was curious if they’d been at capacity for several years or if it was just busy bird breaking season.  They responded pretty quickly with information that their person who is certified to handle federally protected birds was off-island, and that only one veterinarian in a neighboring town was qualified to handle these little wonders of nature.  They also said that if I called the Humane Society, they would pick it up and deliver it to this veterinarian. Being one step ahead of people is kinda my style.  I would have known ze Germans were coming long before hood-rats were sieg heiling, it’s just in my nature.

I should have been a trend forecaster, but instead I’m a web developer in a beach hut that on some mornings partakes in saving federally protected species from the cats that live in my neighborhood.  The moral of the story is not to familiarise yourself with species in your locality that you may not know are protected, and it’s not to do the right thing when you see something in need of help, but something far more significant.  Euthanize any cats you ever see.  They are worthless, cause more harm than good, and nothing preys on them and therefore they aren’t a necessity in nature’s food chain. Also any ‘cool’, ‘best’, ‘nice’, ‘different’ cat that you or anyone you know ever had was probably also ‘just like a dog’ (cause all the cats that people like are), and therefore it is an evolutionary failure so put it out of it’s failed existence.  All I’m saying is that if a local restaurant served free-range cat, I’d eat their regularly. I’d probably go so far as to order extra meals that I would have no intention of eating and would just throw out.  That’s how much I love cats.

I woke up at around 11:00AM, which unfortunately for me is late these days. It’s only 7:00PM as I write this.  Somewhere in the 8 hours of being awake, I managed to do quite a few things like visit my parents, visit my grandparents (separate activities), and spend $1000 on bedding.  That’s U.S. currency, with a 15% discount already applied.  Allow me to explain.

About a week ago, I noticed a tear down by the feet area of the sheets that were currently on my bed.  It was only 1 or 2 inches long, but a tear no less.  Around the same time a terrible cold front swept in from the North, and I found myself sleeping in two pairs of socks, sweatpants,  a sheet, blanket, and extra sheet on.  In Hawaii.  My pillowcases don’t match either, one is a neutral tan color, and the other is covered in some red flowers, like the pattern you would find on some Royal Doulton fine China from the 19th Century.  I wish I was kidding.

A Tear In The Fabric Of Our Lives

Over the last few days this tear has grown and grown.  I have placed the quarter there for size comparison, it didnt appear there on its own.  Clearly if I had a tear-fairy in my bed that left me money, I wouldn’t have felt the need to replace my sheets.  So a normal person might just switch out the sheets on his/her bed for one of the clean ones that are already in their closet, but not me.  I had had enough of living like you normal people do, content with your 600 Thread Count plebeian pillowcases, and your non-Hungarian Goose Down Comforter.  So I went to Macy’s.

Somewhere in the mix-up I decided that two pairs of sheets (800 and 700 Thread Counts), two pairs of pillowcases, a new comforter to keep me warm, and a duvet cover for the comforter was what I needed.  If the option to sleep like a king of a small-to-medium sized nation was available to me at the very store that I found myself in, then why shouldn’t I cease the opportunity?

A Bed Worth Bankruptcy

Behold, the bedding of your dreams, and also the bedding of my real life.  Sure I’m going to be in debt trying to pay it off, but it’s not like anyone has gotten into serious trouble buying things they couldn’t actually afford, right?  Imagine if the collapse of the housing market had happened like that!! HAHA!!

Growing up in Tokyo meant that unless my parents wanted to fork over serious dough (the dough that all my friends parents had no problem forking over), we got 1 English television show a week.  For the entire time that we lived there (about 6 years), it was Party of Five, or Melrose Place. That’s it. I think it turned me off television (let’s be honest, how could those two shows not have?) and created addicts out of the rest of my family.  But that’s neither here nor there (but could be used as supporting evidence that I am in fact adopted, should ever the need arise).

The summer we moved back to America, I used to watch Nickelodeon a lot, and got into Hey Arnold.  Arnold was a really cool self-conscious football headed geek, who had quite a few quirks.  Even quirkier was his grandfather who he lived with. He would always share little anecdotes with Arnold about how back in his day he had to ‘walk five miles in the snow to get to school’, you know the types of stories.  The stereotypical stories that old people in Hollywood productions always seem to tell.

As I got older, I used to hear a lot of my grandfathers stories, most of which weren’t anything like the grandfathers from the shows and movies of my childhood.  This is partially because my grandfather didn’t feel the need (and still doesn’t) to guilt me into feeling thankful for trivial things that he didn’t have available to him in his time when he was my age (and also because I’m sure I didn’t complain much).  He is also a very funny man (I have to get it from somewhere right? I think it skips a generation, like the hair loss gene), and so even when he does decide to share a story about ‘back when I was your age’ it doesn’t contain the ‘oh no, here we go again’ mood that is most commonly portrayed during geriatric story-telling sessions.

Recently I’ve been paying attention to expressions that people use often (or ever) in conversation.  It’s funny how expressions that people use are so time-relevant.  Many expressions derive almost all of their meaning contextually based on when they came about or rose in popularity.  Some die when the social context in which they make sense changes drastically enough to no longer support their use, and others hold their meaning regardless of how much changes, adequately withstanding the test of time.

The other day, my grandfather said with all of my visitors that have been coming, and all the work I’ve been doing that I must be ‘busier then Adolf Hitler on D-Day’.  I let out a slight chuckle, but have since been plagued with the idea of Hitler on D-Day.  I have never inquired as to how busy Hitler was on D-Day but based on my broad understanding of the events that occurred on that day, I always figured he was very busy. I mean, the leader of an empire trying to conquer the world must surely always be busy, right? Apparently not. I’m sure this is old news to any history buffs, or television watchers who frequent the History Channel, but part of the reason that D-Day was in fact D-Day was because German tanks couldn’t be mobilized without direct orders from Hitler himself, and his aide refused to wake him up.  On D-Day, Adolf Hitler was sleeping in Berlin. He got up at 11:00 AM. On a Tuesday!?

Learning things like this (which I learned on the Internets, so all of it could be wrong, but I’m a trusting guy) makes me question my grandfathers sayings.  Am I not picking up on his sarcasm after over 80 years of finely tuning it?  Does he not know how much of a slacker Hitler really was (seriously, you need help from the Japanese? Way to settle Hitler)? Or does he just think playing host and playing on the Internet for a paycheck is easy work?

The natural progression of thought leads us to ponder what kinds of things we will say to the second generation below us?  I can see myself saying things like “in my day, we had to dial-up on a phone line that was plugged into the wall and sent along wires to access limited amounts of data” or “when I was your age, most computers couldn’t read minds, so we had these things called keyboards and mice”.  We can already say “when I was your age, we hadn’t had a non-white male President” (I still can’t believe it). Who knows what types of expressions will come about in our time, I’ve already phased out Einstein as an insult and created space for Google to fill in.

What I really want to know, is what expressions we have already lost from generations past.  ‘You look prettier in that dress than J. Edgar Hoover’ or ‘I had the hots for your mother like the British had the hots for the White House’ (1814 bitches, look it up).  Maybe even ‘his jaw dropped faster then the DOW Jones in 2009′. No? Too soon?

These two pages from the book I’m reading speak to me.  One’s unexplainable love for New York City, one’s inability to reason why important decisions are made the way they are made, one’s insufferably racing mind that can rarely lock-in to the here and now.

“Hugh,” he said, “there’s something I was going to ask you.  You’ve got enough money put away you could live high if you wanted to.  Why in God’s name do you live in a little box of a room in a back-street hotel and hang out in the fish market when you could go down to Miami, Florida, and sit in the sun?”

Mr. Flood bit the end off one of his sixty-five-cent cigars and spat it into the scuttle.  He held a splinter in the stove until it caught fire, and then he lit the cigar. “Tommy, my boy,” he said, “I don’t know.  Nobody knows why they do anything  I could give you one dozen reasons why I prefer the Fulton Fish Market to Miami, Florida, and most likely none would be the right one.  The right reason is something obscure and way off and I probably don’t even know it myself.  It’s like the old farmer who wouldn’t tell the drummer the time of day.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Mr. Maggiani.

“It’s an old, old story,” Mr. Flood said.  “I’ve heard it told sixteen different ways.  I even heard a muxed-up version one night years ago in a vaudeville show.  I’ll tell it the way my daddy used to tell it.  There was an old farmer lived beside a little branch-line railroad in south Jersey, and every so often he’d get on the train and go over to Trenton and buy himself a crock of applejack.  He’d buy it right at the distillery door, the old Bossert & Stockton Apple Brandy Distillery, and save himself a penny or two.  One morning he went to Trenton and bought his crock, and that afternoon he got on the train for the trip home.  Just as the train pulled out, he took his watch ofrm his vest pocket, a fine gold watch in a fancy hunting case, and he looked at it, and then he snapped it shut and put it back in his pocket.  And there was a drummer sitting across the aisle.  This drummer leaned over and said, ‘Friend, what time is it?’  The farmer took a look at him and said, ‘Won’t tell you.’ The drummer thought he was hard of hearing and spoke louder. ‘Friend,’ he shouted out, ‘what time is it?’  ‘Won’t tell you,’ said the farmer.  The drummer thought a moment and then he said, ‘Friend, all I asked was the time of day.  It don’t cost anything to tell the time of day.’ ‘Won’t tell you,’ said the farmer. ‘Well, look here, for the Lord’s sake,’ said the drummer, ‘why won’t you tell me the time of day?’

‘If I was to tell you the time of day,’ the farmer said, ‘we’d get into a conversation, and I got a crock of spirits down on the floor between my feet, and in a minute I’m going to take a drink, and if we were having a conversation I’d ask you to take a drink with me, and you would, and presently I’d take another, and I’d ask you to do the same, and you would, and we’d get to drinking, and by and by the train’d pull up to the stop where I get off, and I’d ask you why don’t you get off and spend the afternoon with me, and you would, and we’d walk up to my house and sit on the front porch and drink and sing, and along about dark my old lady would come out and ask you to take supper with us, and you would, and after supper I’d ask if you’d care to drink some more, and you would, and it’d get to be real late and I’d ask you to spend the night in the spare room, and you would, and along about two o’clock in the morning I’d get up to go to the pump, and I’d pass my daughter’s room, and there you’d be, in there with my daughter, and I’d have to turn the bureau upside down and get out my pistol, and my old lady would have to get dressed and hitch up the horse and go down the road to get the preacher, and I don’t want no God-damned son-in-law who don’t own a watch.’”

(1944)

Last night I needed a break from the glow of my monitor, so I decided to walk a few blocks down to the camera store to see if they have the camera bag I want to buy.  It’s only a six block walk, but a six block walk in Waikiki can be as jam packed full of crazy as one or two Manhattan blocks.  I was too busy/tired last night to document my adventure, but now after what could hardly be considered a good night’s sleep, it still seems worthy of documenting.

Block 1:

I walked by my future wife.  When I saw her at first she was glancing down at her flip-flops, and all I saw was a head full of wavy, bouncy, brown hair. Then just as we were passing she looked up, and I knew we would enjoy several years together (which would end in a bitter divorce).

Block 2:

As I was negotiating the terms of my bitter divorce, a young hooligan ran across my path at an impressive speed, especially in flip-flops.  He was holding a backpack in one hand.  He was followed shortly thereafter (a few seconds) by a man holding a phone to his ear yelling ‘STOP THAT GUY’.  This second man looked like at one time he had owned a backpack, but had since lost said backpack. I figured three guys running in flip-flops is surely against all odds, so I decided to continue on.

Block 3:

I walked by my future second-wife who apparently must have just gotten hired at the bar she was working at, since I walk by there quite often and have never seen her before.  Either that, or she just had crazy amounts of surgery that made her noticeable to someone walking by and just glancing in, in a way that her pre-surgery face never hoped to accomplish. She didn’t see me, which was a telling sign of how she is sure to treat me in the years to come.

Block 4:

As I was reflecting on how much of a glutton I was for punishment, and how my love for her is worth the punishment that will accompany it (got baggage?), I walked by the porn store.  Normally an uneventful occurrence, today was a slightly different story.  As I was walking by, a drunk man was leaving (probably by request of the shop owner) the store, and decided that no longer would he accept the disagreement that the various contents of his stomach were currently engaged in.  He outed his demons, and they came to rest splattered across the sidewalk.  Unfortunately, the collateral damage was some fringe factions of his vomit finding their way onto my uncovered feet.  Puke feet, gross.

Block 5:

It’s hard to take your walk serious when you know that your leading with feet that have bits ‘o chunk on them.  Naturally I was looking down at my feet trying to assess the damage for a majority of the block.  Towards the end of the block however, my attention was drawn away from my feet by a man walking by who said ‘HEY’.  As I looked up, he was flicking his nose in an obvious way. I guess he comes across some pretty stupid buyers down in Waikiki, because he then decided to be a little more obvious and ask ‘Do you need anything?’.  Um, a camera bag? To not have puke on my feet? For either of those marriages to have worked out? ‘A tissue.’

Block 6:

I arrive at the camera store, and of course they don’t have the bag I’m looking for.  Despite the absense of this bag, the expedition is a success in the way that only a walk where you get puked one, offered blow, cut off by a thief, and fall in love twice, can be.

Today I got a late start for my day at the beach, so I decided to grab some food to eat en route.  Since I haven’t eaten anything remotely healthy for four or five days (every meal has either been banana bread with melted peanut butter, lasagna, or chocolate chip cookies), I decided to stop by the Whaler’s General Store for one of their Grab-n-Go salads.

Can I take a moment to express my hatred for companies that make their products significantly smaller (like 33% smaller or more), and charge 10% less than the old price? Their Oriental Chicken Salads used used to be the size of a Frisbee, with one smaller container of crunchy fried bits, a healthy amount of fried chicken, and two smaller containers of dressing.  It used to cost $5.30 or so.  Their new salad is the size of a softball, has no small container of crunchy fried bits (just a few sprinkled on top), two little pieces of fried chicken, and one hidden container of dressing.  It now costs $4.70 or so. I remember when the potato chip industry pulled the wool over the consumers eyes in the 90’s, and how M&M’s followed hot on their heels (you now get like 7 peanut M&M’s in a pack, what the shit is that?).

I pick up the salad and pay for it, grab a fork, leave the bag and head to the beach.  I notice only after I leave the store and have crossed the street that there is no dressing in the salad.  So I think to myself “how bad can a salad be without dressing, I mean surely salads were around well before dressings were around, and people ate them”.  Boy was I dead wrong.  After a few bites of lettuce and celery I almost threw up blood.  Salad without dressing is fucking disgusting.  I can only imagine that mulched garbage from a Manhattan dumpster in Chinatown tastes better then a salad without dressing.

Not being one to waste food, I eat half the salad, only to discover that buried underneath the entire salad is a single cup of dressing.  I was so pissed/happy, pissed because I suffered through the first half the salad, and happy because I knew that the second half of my salad would be primarily the sweet MSG saturated honey that they call ‘dressing’ for the Oriental Chicken Salad.

The bottom line is salad sucks. Anything that is only consumable when drenched in sugar sauce, shouldn’t be eaten.  Go buy a salad, not a feta cheese sun-dried tomato arugula salad, but a normal green salad with some chicken in it.  Then eat it without any dressing.  If you don’t throw up, take a picture of the dry empty bowl and send it to me with the receipt and I’ll reimburse your purchase. Tomorrow I’m meating for all three meals.

You aren’t famous because you don’t have a pretty face, or a unique talent, or haven’t married someone famous.  Whatever the reason, you probably wont ever be a celebrity cause you are reading this blog.  Real celebrities don’t even know what a blog is (it’s like vog, except for a blizzard).  I never thought I’d be a celebrity either, until tonight that is.

Allow me to paint you a picture (wouldn’t it be a painting then? Idiots).  It’s 8:53PM (Hawaii Time) and I’m hungry.  My fridge has a Hershey’s Bar, several boxes of TicTacs and some Coke’s in it.  Oh, and a Brita.  That’s it.  It has come to my attention that some of you may think I am being dishonest about things I write here (I don’t know where you would get the idea that I could be dishonest from…Ashley).  The woman walking by in this post could hear the shutter of my digital camera because my digital camera is an SLR.  A Canon 20D to be exact.  Anyway, just to spite the haters (Ashley), proof is in the pudding-less fridge:

Code Monkey Bachelor Fridge 2008

Back to the painting.  I decide to hit up my favorite local Waikiki quick food, the Samurai Takoyaki vendor a couple blocks away.  I arrive there at 9:05PM.  They only serve five things at the Takoyaki shop, conveniently numbered 1 through 5.  For those of you who don’t know what Takoyaki is, it’s a Japanese meal consisting of chopped up octopus tentacles in deep-fried battered balls.  Octopus balls, if you’d like.  Alas, that is not normally what I get.  I normally get Udonyaki (#5), which is a much tamer stir-fried thick noodles with a fried egg on top, some pickled ginger, mayonnaise, Japanese BBQ sauce, fish flakes, scallions,some fried batter drizzle, and chopped-up octopus tentacles. As I arrive, before I place my usual order (a #5 with a Coke) the manager of the shop informs me in heavily accented English that they only have items 1 through 3 after 9PM because they shut down the stir-fry grill.

I immediately process that numbers 1 through 3 involve dipping in a fryer, and numbers 4 through 5 involve using a large stir-frying surface, so they must clean the stir-fry grill early, to let it cool down before they leave.  Even though I see their logic, I can’t bring myself to hide the disappointment on my face.  With a sigh and a smile I inform the manager that I will be returning in the morning for some breakfast Udonyaki.  I turn to walk out, and that’s when it happened, that’s when I became famous.

“Wait-oh, I know you! I know thato guyee!”

I turn around and the guy working the fryers/grill is looking at me with a smile on his face.

“I make-u noodaru foa you”

I insist that it is uneccsary, seeing that he has already cleaned the grill, and that I can save my unsatiated desire for some noodley goodness till the morning, but he is having none of it.  He is honor-bound, the way of the Takoyaki Samurai. So I turn to pay.

One udonyaki please.

“And one coke-u!”

And one coke.

He even knows my drink.  Sure they charge $1.50 for a can, and I have two cold ones sitting in my fridge, but I can’t let down my fans.  After all, he knew this guy.  I sit outside on the sidewalk at the table waiting for him to turn the grills back on, and pull all the ingredients out of the fridge and storage containers.  Even though there was no one else there, it was the longest I’ve ever had to wait for my Udonyaki.  I loved every minute of it.  No one else could even be waiting for their Udonyaki, even if they had been there, because they stopped serving #5 at 9PM…unless you’re me.

He brings it out to me, I bow, he bows, and then I enjoy. The cook and the manager (who also sometimes cooks) move out to the sidewalk to have a smoke after a long day behind the counter.  I clean-up per usual, get some extra napkins for the walk home and walk out of the store.  I stop to thank them both, to let the know that it really hit the spot, and that’s when the deal gets sealed.

“You come-u, anytime-u.  I make noodaru foa you.”

I’ll just make sure to come before 9!

“Eben ifu late-o.”

I nod, they nod, and I get into my limo (a.k.a. I half-trip and one of my sandals falls off).  I’m fucking famous.

Something vicious came over me and I got hungry at lunch time for a feast that no king has ever even known the likes of.  Since I live with me, my fridge has less food then one of those ‘adopt a child from (Insert Destitute African/Asian Country Name Here)’ commercials, so I had to go out for lunch.  I decided it was in my best interest to hit up the International Marketplace which is a few blocks walk from here.  The reason for this decision was three-fold:

1. It’s an outdoor environment, and why live in paradise if you aren’t going to take advantage of the paradise parts at every chance you get?
2. It is a short walk, so if all goes well and after the feast I lose functionality of my legs, it is within crawling distance to the hut.
3. As the name implies the International Marketplace can sell me the entire world to eat, which is fantastic, considering that today my stomach decided that it’s appetite rivaled Galactus’.

Needless to say, this was the best decision I have made in a long time.  Enough happened in my 6 block walk (each way) to fill a 30 page short story.  No one reads books anymore though, so instead I will break up today’s events into several posts which will hopefully continues in a long series of posts inspired by my trips to the Marketplace (I have decided that I will go once a week).

Now that you have some background, let’s get to the good stuff.  I decided to eat Korea today.  All of it, North, South and the DMZ.  It was delicious in a way that only a meal topped off with a large cup of Coca-Cola can be.  I decided to keep the cup of ice for the walk home, and upon sitting down to write this post I noticed that the cup I had been exchanging fluids (and solids) with for the last twenty minutes held wisdom of legendary proportions:

"Expect the Unexpected" - Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, University of Alabama

As you can see this photograph was taken outside the hut, with the cup sitting on my banister.  Coincidentally JUST as I was snapping this photograph, a pretty woman was walking by.  There I was, on one knee, taking a picture of a cup on my banister.  She made a face as if to say “I know you are taking a picture of me, what kind of idiot do you think I must be to believe you are actually taking a picture of a wax-coated paper cup on your banister?”.  I began to feel guilty.  It’s already pretty shitty to be an attractive female walking down the block alone when people (men) cat-call and make comments, but to have them treat you like your some kind of celebrity and be snapping photos of you?

So I hope you read this.  Anyway back to the cup.  If you can’t see in the photograph and didn’t read the caption, the bottom of the cup (on one side) reads:

“Expect the Unexpected”

Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant

University of Alabama

First of all, what?  Second of all, maybe Paul Bryant owns the Yummy chain?  Nope, this Peter Kim guy does. Third of all, maybe the University of Alabama’s sports team shares a mascot with the Yummy chain?  Nope, they are the Crimson Tide. So maybe this coach is just a really profound speaker who came up with a really well known and widely used quote.

Naturally I googled the expression “Expect the unexpected” and this coach’s name was nowhere to be found.  I did find a few people who seemed to think that the host of the big brother show was the originator, which is one of many reasons I love America, but not this coach.  Turns out the furthest back I could find it attributed to anyone was Heraclitus.  He was around a few years before American Football was invented, so I think it’s safe to say that the attribution of the phrase would be better off belonging to him then Paul Bryant (or better yet anyone with two names, cause those old Greek guys only ever had one and they pretty much said everything ever).

It turns out that on the other side of the cup is another quote attributed to Coach Paul “Bear” Bryant, and this article over at the Star Bulletin’s website informs us that Peter Kim was in fact a kicker for the University of Alabama back in his hay.  His coach was none other then Paul “Bear” Bryant.  Now if the mascot for Yummy is actually a ‘Bear in Tiger skin’, I’ll let you decide.