Hey, Mo!

I knew it! Slowly but surely, the English-speaking world is coming around to my point of view. What prompts me to say this, you ask? This week’s Queer Duck uses the word “Mo”. Ha! The next step is calling straight people “Teros”.

Luke, of all people, pointed out a handy site for webloggers who get too big for their britches. This site will tell you exactly how many websites more popular than your are out there. It makes me feel so much better to know there are literally millions of better sites than the one you’re reading right now. And you should feel good about it, too! After all, doesn’t it just make you feel all warm and special to know that you’re reading The Blog Less Read? You’re now officially hip and alternative! You can sniff at your Kottke- and Megnut-reading friends and say “Oh, are those ancient former dot-commers still around? I thought everyone had moved on. I read Poagao these days (sniff).” I should make bumper stickers.

I had a coupon left from my company for Ruby Tuesday’s, so I went there for dinner last night. The deal, as stated on the coupon in both Chinese and English, is “50% off your meal or 2 free movie tickets if you spend over NT$1,000”. I had gotten 50% off my last meal with the first coupon, so I went in, sat down, and ordered, giving the waiter the coupon. A couple of minutes he came back and said that I was required to spend NT$1,000 to get the 50% discount, which is a bit ludicrous for any party less than three or four people. I told him that the coupon was ambiguously worded and indicated that it was an either A or B choice, A being 50% off and B being the two free tickets with NT$1,000, and he went off to huddle with the rest of the staff. I was prepared to forget the whole thing, but the floor manager came up and said they’d let me use it for my paltry NT$300 meal (I usually spend around a third of that for a meal here). So that was that.

Or so I thought. I had gotten my meal and was just digging in when the big manager, the guy who doesn’t have to wear any kind of uniform, came up to me. He wasn’t happy. “We’ve decided you can come back here, but don’t you ever, ever try to pull something like this again.”

“Huh?” I was confused. “I couldn’t anyway. This is the last of my coupons I got from my company.” But he just sneered.

“Yeah, right. For all I know your ‘company’ (I could actually hear the single quotes) hands these out all the time. Just don’t try it again, because I’m not going to stand for any more of this from you.”

I was incredulous that he would treat a customer this way, even if the customer looks as shady as I do. “Look,” I told him, fishing out my O&M card. “Here’s our company telephone number. Why don’t you call it and complain? We’re right next door.” He jotted down the number but his anger seemed to dissapate somewhat when he realized that all of his bluster might have certain less-than-desirable consequences. I saw this and continued. “In fact, that’s ok, because first thing tomorrow morning I will send a company-wide email, letting everyone know about this misunderstanding. Lord knows we wouldn’t want to give out these coupons to some important client like the regional director of a company like Nike or Ericsson, only to have them embarrass themselves at your fine establishment! Don’t worry, I’ll take care of this.”

And I did. The 12-story Ogilvy Centre is home to a large portion of the employees in this area, most of whom have lunch somewhere around Warner Village, and now every one of the hundreds of potential daily customers has received a heads up on the pitfalls of dining at Ruby Tuesdays. It would be unfortunate if this resulted in a noticable drop in their patronage.

Not. Ain’t I a stinker?

Hmmm, the New York Times website has a button that says “Personalize your weather”. It’s about time one of these websites came out with a useful function. Let me see…*browses menu*…I’d like to keep the sunshine, yes, but reduce the heat and humidity a tad, please. Oh, and lose the smog.

I met up with Boogie last night and we went to see Spider-man at the theater next door to my office. I’d read some reviews of it beforehand, and while some people obviously feel that it wasn’t up to snuff intellectually speaking, most people seemed to be really into it. Upon seeing it for myself, I count myself among the latter. It was a masterful blend of action, humor and character development. No, it wasn’t the cinematic equivalent of a PhD in psychology, but the director knew his limitations and did an admirable job of telling the story, something at which many projects these days fail utterly. Yeah, the CGI will look dated in a few years, but the story will always be well-told, and that quality doesn’t fade with time. MJ was a little annoying, JJJ was perfect, Tobey Maquire did a great job, and Willem Dafoe portrayed the dual-nature of the Green Goblin without going overboard with it. My favorite line: “Work was murder. Oh, I picked up a fruitcake.”

Unfortunately the guy sitting behind us in the theater seemed to be a recently released mental patient, as he kept laughing hysterically whenever anyone in the film did anything. He also had the annoying habit of repeating the lines in the movie. Of all the days to have forgotten my sword…

I got another picture in the Mirror Project. Actually, I also got this one in a while ago as well, but forgot to mention it.

In other news, my friend Mindcrime will be arriving back in Taiwan this Sunday, the 12th, no doubt with all of his worldly possessions in tow. I told him I would meet him at the airport with a forklift. It will be interesting to show him how much Taipei has changed in the few years he has been away. Or maybe it hasn’t. It’s always hard to be objective when you’re living in once place all the time.

That irks me. Moving into the new office has, as I predicted, staved off the feeling that I am stagnating here, but it cannot prevent it completely. I’m not sure I want it to. More and more lately I’ve been feeling that I need to get out of here and move on. My friends tell me to “take a donkey to look for the horse”, as it goes in Chinese, i.e., I should keep a tight hold on this vine until I’ve got a hold on the next one, but who knows when that’s going to be? Ironically, the whole point of my film The End is that, although we fear the next step and kid ourselves that we don’t really need to take it, there really is no other way out. I just need to take my own advice.

I know myself well enough, however, to realize that when the bitching and moaning gets to a certain level, I’m going to do whatever it is I’m bitching and moaning about. I should remember that and just chill until I make my move.

Well, it’s finally happened: Office Turtle has at long last made a meal out of Jerry the Fish. Although to be honest I don’t think that this was a result of Office Turtle actually catching Jerry, but rather Jerry dying of a combination of old age and the mental stress of being in a small plastic box with a turtle. Now I have to get a new fish. I’ll probably get another Victim fish and another Jerry fish, for Office Turtle’s now-and-later snacking habit plus the enjoyment of watching them go at it for a week or two.

Our company trip is next month, and, as I did last year when I went to Hong Kong, I’ve decided to take the least expensive option. Unfortunately, Hong Kong isn’t on the list this year, so I’m going to have to shell out a few more clams so I can go spend five days lazing around the island of Bali, which, I understand, features a volcano you can paraglide over. I wonder if they rent ultralights.

The alternative to the company trip is just wandering about our fair island for five days at my own expense, but I figure I can do that on my own, and I’m waiting until I have a proper-sized motorcycle to make my next round-the-renegade-province tour. And US$300 for a trip to Bali ain’t bad.

In other news, my mate Graham has come up with a website of his very own. It’s mostly pictures of the 70’s Airport Love Palace at the moment, but as he’s currently practicing the fine art of cartoon drawing and is already a writer, I expect great things from it in the not-too-distant future.

There’s been a camera crew downstairs all day today filming a woman walk with a serious expression on her face, arms crossed in front of her. I know exactly what kind of commercial it is, since 99% of Taiwanese commercials are the same thing, i.e. “Arrogant, ultra-cool woman walks around disdainful of the fact that she is too cool for this plane of existance”. What a waste of film. Sad thing is, it’s our commercial. Oh, well. More of the same crap.

After lazing around my room all morning yesterday playing along to jazz MP3s on my trumpet, I decided to take advantage of our current drought, aka sunny weather, by getting out of the house. In my search for another place to live, I took the MRT down to Xindian yesterday afternoon. Xindian is at the very end of the line, and the station is walking distance from the Xindian River, which curves through some mountains before running into the Danshui River. The area near the MRT stop is called Bitan, and a suspension bridge crosses the river to the other side. I was thinking that I wouldn’t mind living on the other side of the bridge, since it’s reasonably quiet and the air is fresh, but I couldn’t find any realty offices or even neighborhood bulletin boards with home-made rental ads on them. All in all, I think I would prefer Danshui to Xindian, in that Danshui has mountains and the sea, whereas Xindian just has the mountains.

I took the subway back to the city and got off in the West Gate District, where I walked around and bought things for a couple of hours. One of the things I bought was a CD of classical Chinese flute music with one of my favorite songs, the “New Song of the Herdsmen”, which is a challenging piece best played really fast. I first heard it when I was in junior high school in Maitland, Florida, when I borrowed an LP of Chinese music from the library there. The album was obviously made during the cultural revolution, since all of the songs had been renamed, and that particular one was called “Ode to My Glorious Tractor” or something like that. My parents saw the titles and went berserk, demanding to know how I could bring such communist propaganda into their house. Nothing I could say convinced them that it was just traditional Chinese music. In any case, since it is a song best played quickly, I looked for the version with the shortest time and bought it. I like the challenge of a fast, complicated piece, especially when it’s a professional musician being challenged.

I went back to the shop where I recalled seeing a Hitler-themed T-shirt to see if it was still there. It was, and I decided to buy it, not just to show you what kind of ignorant shit people come up with here, but also to keep some poor Taiwanese person from buying it and actually wearing it. It reads “EVII., Hitler 1889.4.20-1945.4.30 Worship an idol…An iconoclast…Hitler, A”. Ironically, it’s yellow. The tag says it was made in Korea by “Two Sharp one” Jeans, and includes a picture of a beetle, a graphic of a torso from Grey’s Anatomy, and a quote from “Revelation 1;8”. Bizarre stuff.

Kirk called up and said he and another friend were planning to go to the Taiwan Bear Club that evening, so I said I’d come along. In light of the average physique of the guys at the Bear Club, I promptly went to Friday’s and stuffed myself with a creamy Italian dish and a slab of Mocha Mud Pie before walking to my destination. As usual, the beefy greeter was fawning all over Kirk in an amusing fashion. Kirk was a bit concerned that people would recognize him from an online personals ad he placed a couple of weeks ago, and since the place was full of hefty guys in rugby shirts, bandanas and cargo pants, he wasn’t entirely sure of his safety if anyone he had rejected took issue with the fact. “Don’t worry,” I told him. “If things get ugly, you can count on me to call 119.”

Kirk retaliated by asking me if there was anyone in the room I fancied. Foolishly, I looked around and spotted a guy who wasn’t bad looking, but to my surprise he turned out to be the cousin of the greeter who was fawning all over Kirk, who took this opportunity for revenge, inviting the fellow over to our table and telling him that I had a crush on him. I winced as he went on and on about me, but all I could do was assure the cousin that Kirk was Full of Shit and tell him not to pay attention to anything he said. All in all it was fun, though. I like the crowd at the Bear Club much better than the people at Fresh or the Source, or even Funky. It’s just a bunch of guys who like being guys, and who also like other guys. Nary a limp wrist to be seen.

Sword practice tonight, of course, but I should get out and do something before then. For some reason, Yahoo mail isn’t working. I suppose this is part of Yahoo’s campaign to convince stupid people to switch to their “Premium” service. All it convinces me of, however, is that Yahoo sucks rhino balls.

Not only do we have Office Vampires, it seems we’ve got Office Alien Monsters, too. I was typing away this morning, fighting a bit of a hangover from last night’s alcoholic-themed gathering at Saints and Sinners, when someone tapped my shoulder. I turned around to find a large person dressed in a rubber suit fashioned to resemble one of the cave-dwelling alien monsters from Star Trek. He grunted at me.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, rubbing my head. He grunted again and pointed at his sign, which indicated that the alien was in search of submissions for the 4-A Advertising Awards. “Your lungs are showing,” I said, pointing at a place where the costume didn’t quite come together. I guess he didn’t appreciate my candor because he rushed off before I could get a decent picture. All I got was this National Enquiresque shot. Here’s a shot of its encounter with an office worker who turned out to be a little less comfortable with the fellow.

It was Friday, so everyone was throwing work at me at the last moment. I managed to get out without doing too much unpaid overtime, and rode over to the KMT office where my friend and former college roomie Yao Fu-wen lives and works. He and another roomie, Yu Long-tong, aka Tong-a, were there waiting for me as they watched an NBA game on TV. Tong-a was taunting Fu-wen with today’s paper, which held the final score of the game on TV. We went out for dinner and talked of old times before Tong-a had to rush back to school, where he’s working on his PhD thesis, entitled: What the Hell Am I Going to Do In the Real World? Seriously, though, he plans to teach for a while before becoming president.

Fu-wen and I went back up to the office and had some fun looking up names in the KMT database. We found about 50 people with my name, admitted a rather common name here, and only one with the same name as Fu-wen. Then we looked up various political figures and found quite a few, including current president Chen Shui-bian. He joined the KMT in high school, it seems. Interesting stuff.

I was going to go see Spider-man with Boogie, but he’s got to go do TV spots in Kaohsiung and Hualian this weekend. We’ll probably see it some time next week. I’m looking forward to it.

This morning as I was getting on my motorcycle to go to work, the old guy who guards the door downstairs came up to me and started in on the whole “marry my daughter, or at least move in with her” thing. I had thought he had given up on that, but apparently recent publicity has brought the issue back to him. I told him I was happy alone, etc., but again, I’m not sure whether he caught my meaning. Another reason to move away from here, I guess.

Usually when we get new employees, they’ll be paraded around and introduced to everyone. Today we’ve got a shitload of new people, more than I’ve ever seen coming in at the same time before, so a large mob is moving around our office today. They’re oohing and aahing at the pool table right now. I suppose they’ll come over here next…

Human Resources Drone: “…and here’s Poagao, who maintains a kooky website with ill-advised design. Look! He’s updating it right now! Watch him log in to Blogger and type away! Isn’t this facinating? Sometimes he even does a bit of work!”

*points and laughs derisively at my use of the word ‘derisively’*

Mob of New People: “Ooh. Aah.”

…ok, they’re gone now. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. One of them was actually quite cute. Our office is more interesting than most, so they’re probably getting a real kick out of seeing things like the boxing ring and Office Turtle.

One of the fish I bought to amuse Office Turtle is still alive, surprisingly. The other became prey literally minutes after I put it in the bowl. The other one, though, has been hiding under rocks and occasionally darting out to taunt Office Turtle. It’s like watching an episode of Tom and Jerry, although this iteration includes the possibility of Tom biting off Jerry’s head and leaving the corpse floating in the water until he’s hungry again. You know, the kind of stuff we Gen-Xers enjoyed as kids but which is all censored out in today’s cartoons.

The Oriented folks have gotten around to putting up all of the embarrassing photographs from the Happy Hours on their site. Check out the expressions on my and Dean’s faces when they told us how much our drinks cost. Title of this picture: “You want how much for this sub-standard beer?”

I got up this morning in time to hear the radio spot I did on ICRT. It sounded pretty good. They’re going to broadcast it again tonight at around 6:25pm, in case you feel like playing “Find the Broadcast Link” on their rather poorly-designed website.

Turns out that, while ICRT’s new building is a large, brand new structure up on Songjiang Rd., their actual offices aren’t much better than the interior of Ye Old Shack of Yore on Yangming Mountain. It could have been any office, any school with listening booths, and their recording equipment couldn’t even do seperate tracks for sound. Amazing. I met David Wang, Joseph Lin, “Captain” Tim Bergie (I had to resist saluting him), and Richie Walker rushed by on his way somewhere. David and I chatted a bit about our army experiences, but Joseph grew up in LA or somewhere, I guess.

Jeff Steele, the reporter and a very nice guy as well, let me listen to what he had so far. Some of the music didn’t quite fit, and he couldn’t find much in the way of military sounds, so afterwards I went down to the Guanghua Market to have a look around. Unfortunately it was closed, so I went to a nearby record store and asked if they had any military music.

“Japanese military music?” the lady asked. I shook my head.

“European? American?”

“No, Taiwanese military music. In Chinese,” I said. But she just looked at me as if I were crazy. Fortunately one of the other women knew of a store near the Yonghe Night Market called “Andy”, where they had what I was looking for. She gave me directions and I went home, parked my motorcycle and walked to Guting Station, where I caught the train out to Dingxi Station. I followed the woman’s directions, threading my way through the night market, and eventually found the Andy Music Shop. It turned out, after a few more strange looks, that it wasn’t the right Andy Music Store, and I was again given directions the other Andy Music Store, which was about 15 minutes down an alley towards the river.

The woman behind the counter at the other Andy Music Store couldn’t fathom how anyone would know they had those particular CD’s, but at least they had them. I bought a couple and made my way back to the station. I didn’t feel like going home, so I called up Harry and Kirk and to find out if they felt like going out, so we all met up at Fresh, where we sat out on the balcony and talked until late. As usual, it wasn’t my crowd at all, but it was good to get out for a bit. Harry, being the resident expert on Things Taoist, gave me a lecture on the little “ghost table” they have set up on the 4th floor. Turns out it’s a mixture of Tibetan and more local gods. Hopefully they all get along.

After lazing around all day today, I brought the CD’s in to the studio this evening, and Jeff seemed pleased with the results. We picked some of the songs I could actually remember singing in the army, and then added some sound effects from a tape I made myself back then of marching sounds, hiding my walkman in my uniform and clipping the microphone to my collar. The piece is going to run at about 7:35 a.m. and again at about 6:25 p.m. tomorrow, May 2nd. I think it’s going to come out ok. I enjoyed doing it. It certainly involves more creativity than my day job can provide.

Speaking of which, it’s back to the grind tomorrow. Gavin has arranged a get-together at Saints and Sinners after work. Apparently there’s some arrangement wherein “blokes get free beer”, as he put it. I suppose that couldn’t go too far amiss.

I just finished watching Scarface, in which Al Pacino spends two hours and 45 minutes being an asshole to Yanni music. Could have been worse, I suppose. He could have spent a similar amount of time being an asshole to Enya stuff.