The typhoon turned out to be "just kidding" about …
The typhoon turned out to be “just kidding” about causing all kinds of natural disasters here, I think it said in a press release. The weather’s been cool and pleasant pretty much the whole time it was supposedly lashing the island. The turtles in the cage outside my window didn’t even get wet. So much for the typhoon season. Who knows if there are any more in store for us? How can we know if they’re serious or just mocking us? We need a meteoropsychologist in here, stat!
Still, it was good for a day off from work on Friday, so I didn’t have to wear Ze Zoot again. I might have to again at some point in the future, though, and if I think I can get away with it, I am going to wear the fedora and talk like someone with an unlikely nickname from the 30’s. I spent most of Friday lying around, except for when I went out for lunch and mango slushes with Mindcrime. I tried to watch The Royal Tenenbaums, the film that dares answer the burning question “What would happen if we put all of the actors in the middle of the frame?” and Saving Silverman, aka “Evil Woman” in Taiwan, but I couldn’t get through either one. I did manage to get through Crimson Pig, which is an animated piece by the makers of Totoro. I liked Totoro better.
Today I did a bit more unpacking. It will be weeks, nay, months before everything is out of boxes and in its place here. Just for fun I went to a real estate place around the corner and asked the guy what I could get in the neighborhood for around 10k a month. He just shook his head and said “Nothing. There’s nothing available in this area for anywhere near that cheap.” Au contraire! I wanted to say, I’ve got a 12-ping apartment for just 8k! Ha! But I didn’t say that; I just thanked him and left. He could have just made fun of me for not having an elevator anyway.
Since we had Friday off, Saturday felt like Sunday. Taijiquan practice wasn’t too bad. At one point the teacher had us in a particular pose when he said “Now hold that for half an hour.” It was supposed to be an exercise in Qi, for since I am an undisciplined lout, it quickly because an exercise in Thinking for Half and Hour about What I Wanted to Eat for Dinner Later. Which is probably just as good.
Something’s been bothering me lately: I can’t for the life of me figure out how the “X-10” camera is able to summon dripping wet supermodels out of the ether for particularly gullible men to watch on their computer monitors. Are these women being paid to adopt ridiculous poses and jumping up and down as if on trampolines in various unremarkable living rooms? Do they have anything at all to do with the camera? Why are they all looking at the camera, anyway? Do they know it’s there? Isn’t the whole point of the thing its ability to go undetected? I must admit that I’m at a complete loss. It’s the toughest problem since the one about Adam and Eve having navels or not. There, now you won’t be able to sleep tonight, either.
