Today I was out on the boat with my good friend Voni. We decided to go to the sandbar since the weather was nice and we wanted to do some relaxing and snorkeling. I tend not to go to the parts of the Sandbar where all the other boats go, since silence is solitudes favorite mistress after all. There was only one other boat within ear shot, the same one that I’d seen at the same spot last week. A powered catamaran with an eclectic group of tourists on board.

As we dropped anchor, they were preparing to leave. Unlike the last time I’d seen the boat leave, the captain decided today to break out his guitar and sing a song or two for his passengers on deck.  He put on a descent act and between the two songs made note to his passengers that there were four couples on board celebrating their honeymoon. Two couples had made the voyage from as far as Japan, and the other two I assume were mainland Americans.

On an otherwise unremarkable (at least to me in my current life) Thursday, I had casually decided to spend the sunny hours of the day doing what I do often, hanging out on the boat with a friend at the sandbar. Today, on that single catamaran alone, eight people had chosen this activity as one of the few things they would do on what most couples assume will be the best week of their lives. Their best week of their lives were spent doing what I do on an average Thursday? Can this be real?

I obviously spent some time thinking over this conundrum of epic proportions and decided to vocalize it to Voni. She had heard the captains speech about the honeymooners, but hadn’t thought about the situation quite like I had. We didn’t talk much about it at the time, but I’m sure in the days to come we will. I did happen to mention that I felt I had done nothing to deserve this, and she made some remark about how I was ‘blessed’ (a term I love to despise). My only retort was something to the effect that we should all revel in the random chaos that led me, in this universe, to be there at the sandbar with her at that moment, for us a Thursday and for others less than one hundred feet away their honeymoon.

Life isn’t fair. I get that. I’m fortunate/lucky/blessed/victim-of-chance/whatever-you-fate-loving-star-reading-cosmic-circumstance-tea-leaf-reading lunatics want to call it. I get that too. I can’t appreciate my situation in this life because I can’t remember all my previous lives where I endlessly dedicated myself to bettering the world, karmic amnesia. Sure, I can even get that too. I’ll accept it all (or none of it, but this isn’t where my current dilemma lies). It’s where do I go from here?

I don’t mean geographically. The sandbar is great, it’s beautiful. I’m in Hawaii after all (but it’s Oahu, it’s not Kauai or Maui), so forgetting the beauty that immediately surrounds you at all times would be a trying task for anyone but the blind. I know there are more beautiful places on this earth, I’ve been there. If I wanted to live there, I would. I don’t mean that any honeymoons I may have will have to be ‘better’ or ‘more’ than a visit to the beloved sandbar of Kaneohe bay.  Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but a week on the couch with the one you love can be just as rewarding (“Tell me that after you’ve been married for X number of years” you say. HAR HAR, “I’m sorry you decided to spend forever with someone who you didn’t feel that way about, everyone makes mistakes, I’m sorry you made that mistake. Yes I know a divorce attorney” I say. I digress).

What I mean is, if I decided to have goals/dreams (and for those of you who don’t know, I don’t), what could I possibly expect them to be? I live in paradise. I have a roof over my head. I have the only job I’ve ever wanted. I have every material possession I want (and I want less of what I have). I used to think I didn’t want to have goals/dreams because they limited people and a side-effect was a disconnection with life as it was passing (keep your eyes on the prize, and you forget your supposed to be enjoying the experience). Nowadays I’m more inclined to think that if I actually fabricated goals/dreams for myself they’d border on absurdity.

I know I’ve burned through twice my allotted quota of proverbial metaphors, but if you’ll permit me this final attempt I’ll be able to end this post confident that at least one of them will make sense. I’m not sure the last time I’ve had this much trouble articulating my thoughts on paper or out loud, unfortunately this isn’t a rarity lately (maybe I’m getting old). We are in uncharted waters, with no nautical navigation charts, no GPS or depth-finders here. We march to the beat of a different drum, and we don’t know what to do when our drummer quits? Different drum drummers are hard to come by. They don’t frequent craigslist or myspace (remember, they drum the beats on a different drum). If we are so lucky that we find a stand-in, what happens if we don’t like their beat? What happens if we can’t figure out how to march to it? Or worse, what happens if we figure it out just fine, but we aren’t sure about where we are marching to?

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?

It’s sad (not in the way that I actually feel sad about this kind of thing anymore, but sad in the trendy ‘think about it for 2 seconds’ sad, but that’s what good old fashioned New York cynicism will do to a person) that we still live in a country that is sussing out issues like this (discrimination, genderism, sexism, jerkism, etc.).

I’m glad in the last two weeks we have been actively becoming the country we pride ourselves on being.  I don’t care how cool you say you are, it doesn’t change how cool you are.  I also don’t care how great a country you say this is, it doesn’t change how short it falls of greatness at times.

Here’s to one more step in the right direction.

Thanks Ashley.  And thank you The South (I rarely give you much credit).

I don’t get a lot of junk mail anymore.  I have several magazine subscriptions (those bastards sell your name and address faster then investors were selling stocks this week), and as a result I used to get a lot of junk mail.  At one point in time my address was the forwarding address for my parents mail, and with all the shit they used to buy out of catalogs I was getting the same amount as your average 80 year old. But not anymore.

Did I install a spam filter at the United States Postal Service? No, they don’t make such a thing.  But I did declare a War on Junk Mail. I didn’t start this war under false pretenses, and I also didn’t expect my bigger guns and bigger budget to expedite my victory. Oh no.  I used cunning and wit the likes of which you have never seen.  I did research.  I read the books.  I studied my enemy.  I learned their methods, and then I improved upon them to retaliate.  Then, I won. So today, I begin to share with you the stories of my steady success, in hopes that you can one day free your mailbox from the tyranny of shit.

Enemy #1 - Credit Card Applications

That’s right, Enemy #1 are those god forsaken credit card offers (CCO’s).  The photograph above is the before shot, this is what they look like hot of the press as they are left in your mailbox.  They have all different types of fancy writing on them, to make you feel special, and hand-picked, but they are all a crock of shit. As you have already experienced from the first four credit cards you signed up for, they are designed to suck the ever-living lifeblood out of your bank accounts.

‘But, 0.0% APR financing, and no payments until my second child is born, and I don’t plan on having a second child!’ you say?  Well condoms aren’t 100% effective, and if the financial institutions of the country have anything to say about it, you’ll be having that unplanned second child (they have their ways).  So how do you resist such great deals on giving away your money, and more importantly, reduce the flow of CCO’s showing up in your mailbox?  Send them back.

There are two methods to combating the influx of CCO’s into your home.  The first is the lazy method, and I can’t speak to it’s efficacy because I don’t like half-assing my wars.  Simply take a pen, cross-out your address and write “Return To Sender” and drop it back in your mailbox or at your nearest post office. The second is the motivated method, and brings me unrivaled satisfaction.

1. Carefully open the CCO, and remove the contents of the envelope.
2. Included in the contents will be an envelope (NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES).
3. Open this envelope, and place the CC application and any other flyers that were included into it.
4. Now, here’s the kicker, take the original envelope (that you opened carefully), and fold in such a way that it fits INTO the included envelope.
5. What you should have when you are done, is a tight little package ready to mail back that will look like this:

Credit Card Retaliation

This is a little nugget I picked up from the Taliban I like to call ‘using the same weapons that America sold them a few years ago, on America’.  I really recommend this second method, it’s a zero-tolerance solution since everything that they sent to you (including the envelope it came in) is returned to them, it prevents junk mail from filling up your garbage (which you then have to take out less often, or if you live in a place where you have to pay per bag, you save money in the long run), it helps support the USPS by giving them more business, and it also, after a while, cuts down on the amount of junk mail you get.

Why does this work?  Well, I can’t say for sure.  My sources on the inside tell me it costs them $0.42 to mail the CCO to you, and then it costs them another $0.42 to get it back.  They then have to pay for the machines (used to be people) that open them, only to find out that the applications are blank, that the flyers were returned, and that the original envelope is also included (probably jams their machines, so they have to pay the maintenance people to fix the jammed machines).  They then see your name and address on that envelope (or sometimes pre-printed on the application) and they remove your name from their mailing lists!  It may take a few tries, and it takes a while (8-12 weeks) for your name to be fully removed from the system, but after doing this for two years, I now only receive 1-3 CCO’s a year.  That’s right, 1-3 CCO’s a year. Read it and weep bitches.

Feel free to spice it up a little as well.  I like to save the magnets that they sometimes include (in the shape of a cute little money-vampire credit card), and then send magnets from competing financial institutions back.  Like a credit card magnet trading game, where I’m the only one that is having fun, and always the one that gets the better deal.  If you really wanna put your lead foot down, you can go and purchase thin strips of lead at the hardware store, which weigh a lot, and include them in the mail.  As long as the envelope that is marked “NO POSTAGE NECESSARY IF MAILED IN THE UNITED STATES” is not modified/manipulated/altered in any way, you are good to go.  The lead costs money though, my methods are free (although admittedly, probably less effective).

Stay tuned for Part 2, and feel free to share your junk mail combating methods.

I made a conscious decision when starting this site, not to turn it into a factory of regurgitating links/sites/videos found elsewhere on the Internet.  I’m a firm believer that if you don’t have anything unique/new/distinct to say then you shouldn’t say anything (in a public forum). However that being said, sharing things found elsewhere on the web is not a terrible idea, especially some of these less-obvious gems.  I have stock-piled these three videos for your enjoyment.

James Valley

James Valley is the mayor of Helena-West Helena, Arkansas.  The town is in a pretty poor state, so Mayor Valley implemented a curfew to keep the streets safer and protect the tax-paying citizens.  Sounds like a good guy just trying to do his best to clean up the town. As he states, the curfew is a ‘zero tolerance, they’re going to jail’ type of curfew. I like that, everyone knows the rules, swift justice for those who violate them.  The last seven seconds of the video though, Mayor Valley’s real sense of justice is revealed when he let’s us know that instead of putting the drug dealers and hustlers in jail, “we gonna pop them in the head.” I wonder how he became mayor?

Virtual Hooshmand

Margaret is an Executive Assistant for a Cisco Networks executive (Marthin DeBeer).  She doesn’t want to do her assisting in the office (or even the same state) as her boss so she telecommutes everyday on a plasma screen display that is located at her old desk. Her new name placard says Virtual Margaret, and her co-workers still love to gossip with her.  One even offers her some tea/coffee with 18 seconds remaining in the video.  We’ve had web cams since the Internet went public, so that’s really not a big breakthrough.  I think that Cisco may be hinting at some new technology coming down the pipe, where you’ll be able to teleport coffee/tea to your telecommuting co-workers.  Either that or Margaret works with idiots.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv0smG7ptcM[/youtube]

Dennis Kucinich

I’ll end on a positive note.  Where to start, where to start.  Clearly the best speech of the convention, and I’m sure most of you missed it the first time around. If Kucinich wasn’t so quirky, he’d actually get votes in primaries and maybe be an excellent President (how many other candidates carry a copy of the constitution in their pocket?)  From the “Are you ready for November” (“Let’s get ready to rumble”), to giving a shout-out to Stephanie, he owned this speech.  He stops using a teleprompter half-way through the speech, and begins to evoke the Hulkamania fever that swept over the nation in the 80’s. But the best part of the speech, is the woman at 4:30 who doesn’t know the color of the money in her purse.  That’s okay, she was mesmerized.  He finished strong, and it resonated with me.

Up with the rights of workers.  Up with wages. Up with fair trade. Up with creating millions of good paying jobs rebuilding our bridges, our water systems, our sewer systems, our ports. Up with creating millions of sustainable energy jobs to lower the cost of energy, lower carbon emissions, and protect the environment. Up with health care for all. Up with education for all. Up with home ownership. Up with guaranteed retirement benefits. Up with peace. Up with prosperity. Up with the Democratic Party. Up with Obama-Biden. Wake up America, wake up America, wake up America.

A man who clearly loves his country, countrymen and countrywomen. A man who clearly has his priorities in proper order.  A man after my own heart.

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.

I might be French.  Not really, but today was a super French day for me.  What make’s a day French? I’ll tell you, but with a Memento motif (the time-line is not going to be your traditional beginning to end style).

I found myself at lunch eating McDonald’s with my dad (So French already, right? I mean only the French eat lunch with their fathers).  Visiting the golden arches isn’t a normal occurrence for either of us, but it was the closest food place for our forty-five minute break from an eight hour boating safety class we were taking with the Coast Guard Auxiliary guys.  My order included pineapple (all value meals come with it here) and of course FRENCH fries.  I know right?  How crazy!  I’m pretty much a frog.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Some time ago I was in an accident which damaged the part of my brain that allows me to form short-term memories…kidding, but if you haven’t seen Memento you really should, now would be the time.  But seriously, I was born in Canada (not another joke, I swear).  Canada is pretty much a country version of the Prius, where France is the electric and England is the petrol part of the engine.  Everyone there is pretty much half-french.

After I was born, I ended up in a yacht club where six people were taking this safety course.  One of the guys was named Jacques (Jock for you francophobes). He was talking about when he lived in New Zealand and some other places, so I’m not sure if he was New Zealand French or Canadian French or Real French, but his name was Jacques and he did speak with a slight accent.  In the name of full disclosure, he was also pretty old and sometimes old people just talk funny. So me and Jacques are pretty much best friends now because we are both in it to win it during this eight hour course, and there is only one person sitting between us.

So there I am, a Canadian, who will soon be having French fries for lunch, sitting next to a guy with a French name.  If you had to plot a graph of how French I’ve been in my life, the line would definitely have peaked right there. And then it happens. The instructor is telling us about what mistakes not to make because if we do:

“You are going to get pretty pissed off….excuse my French.”

Hot off the heels of Saturday’s idiom/expression post comes this whopper. I’ve heard it many times before, but never really thought about it.  So here I am, in the middle of my Frenchest day ever, and someone pulls out the ole ‘Excuse my French’ card.  Naturally,  I glance to my left to see if Jacques has taken any offense, and he hasn’t. So I take it for him. I cringe and wince in my chair unnoticed by those who have been tasked with protecting America’s shores from terrorists and criminals while at the same time wondering where the hell that expression came from.