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Monday, November 9th, 2009
ferricide
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11:55p
pomplamoose
anybody tempted to go see pomplamoose on friday night? at brainwash? it's a fucking laundromat!
if not...
are you now? now?
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ferricide
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11:42p
complications.
so apparently when the fox theater tickets say "8 pm" without any qualification, they mean show at 8, not doors at 8. doors were at 7. consequently i missed the first 4 pixies songs, and also caused david (hellman) who went with me, to do so as well. fucking christ. what a fucking nightmarish hassle this whole thing turned out to be.
it was a pretty good show, but i wish i could erase the whole fucking thing, really.
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(2 comments | comment on this) Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
mrlonghair
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7:07a
Three days of drinking tap water later, it is really difficult to sleep and my stomach is so swollen you might as well ask me when the twins are due. I did change the.. thing on the end of the tap.. into a new one fresh from the shop, let it run for a while to get a good flow and rinse out any potential chemicals, too, but even then.
Maybe I'm allergic towards bad tap water.
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(comment on this) Monday, November 9th, 2009
skankinclams
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10:04p
I got a haircut today that MIGHT make me look like a lesbian.
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(comment on this) Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
(5 comments | comment on this) Monday, November 9th, 2009
daphaknee
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12:44p
OH BOY IM GONNA INTERMINGLE MY PANEL WEDDING NONSENSE WITH A FUCK JOURNAL HOW ABOUT THAT
hey meowzbow
sorry im going to new york for five days
im sorry!
DONT TAKE IT OUT ON HIBIKI ILL BE BACK
so i went to new yorkrkrkrkrkrrk for a wedding but well mostly for dess's panel with cactus and messhoff where they get to talk about how they're really good at making games and WHY ISNT EVERYONE SHOWEING THEM WITH MONEY
or something
here are some pictures
( BUT FIRST A BURGER LOLITA )
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daphaknee
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9:06a
MP3 CLUB ROUND SEVEN
OH HITHTISHTISHTISTHI im finally posting round seven of the mp3 club
the theme this time around was BAR ROOM BRAWLLLLL
extra credit is pictures of WOUNDS you've INFLICTED or SUSTAINED drawings were accepted thisi time since for some reason ive got a bunch of dumb ~artists~ in the club
if you're interested in joining the club or know someone that is TELL THEM TO EMAIL ME drippynipple at gmail and ill SHOVE THEM ON THE LIST AND FORCE THEM TO PARTICIPATE
songs:
http://www.mediafire.com/?xy2fmizzuzk
extra credit:
http://www.mediafire.com/?j5yzkzyfm0w
rejections (this is kinda half assed becuase i decided to do it after i already started throwing songs away, i dont evne think this is all the songs i rejected but whatever you can see the shit i have to deal with BEHIND THE SCENES):
http://www.mediafire.com/?iyholqky3k4
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(4 comments | comment on this) Sunday, November 8th, 2009
tablesaw
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10:08p
Two Icons from the Suburbs
I fixed the Twilight Zone icon from yesterday, so here it is for LJ watchers:
But the icon for this post is different:
This icon comes from a picture taken by my dad of the rose bush in front of our house. Before being in front of our house, it was in the yard of my aunt Debbie who died six years ago.
There've always been rosebushes in my mother's family. I remember helping (or rather "helping" as young children are often employed) my grandmother to do something with the roses in the yard of her Sherman Oaks home. It might be that this rosebush was originally one of my grandmother's; I've lost track of the lineage of roses.
I don't think my mother's been as diligent in her upkeep, but we live in Los Angeles, and we can get pretty lucky with plants, and so the flowers come out when they feel like it, and survive until the next time.
This journal has moved to Dreamwidth. Entry originally posted at http://tablesaw.dreamwidth.org/429440.html.
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current music: The Negro Problem, "Boomy Guitar Song"
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Monday, November 9th, 2009
daphaknee
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12:14a
back from nyc, awesome panel shitty wedding stories and pictures and mp3 club tomorrow
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(2 comments | comment on this) Sunday, November 8th, 2009
skankinclams
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11:44p
August 17th, 2009
On August 18th I began writing this entry. I ended up not even getting to August 17th then. I wrote more of it right after my return to America, now 20 minutes before I turn 25, I finish it. Many details were fresh and heavy in my mind on August 18th. There were less and less clear the next two sessions. Still, as a serious piece of writing about my life, I'm happy to have written it. Thank You.
I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to begin from Yesterday. The night before that, I had come home monsterly tired and passed out. I woke up at 2AM, thanks to an alarm I set to make me go to bed. This alarmed hadn't worked at all, but I still had it go off everynight. Still it woke me up, unable to go back to sleep at 2AM.
I went and took a cold shower, considered the food I had available. I could cook something, but my energy for that had been non-existent, even knowing I needed to get rid of everything fairly soon. I went back to my TV, turned on my xbox, and sat on the sofa. I browse the 1000s of games I had the console, looking for something to catch my eye. I remembered I had stated Day of the Tentacle on ScummVM, or the xbox port of it. I loaded it up and sat to work.
I was surprised how much of the game I remembered, years later. The first time I had played it, or saw it played was at my grandparents, my cousin had gotten it. I was amazed by how cartoon like it was. Even today, the animation is really impressive. I compared it to Psychonauts, and found DotT came out on top, way on top. That was comforting. The jokes were better, and it wasn't loaded down with everything that is Psychonauts is.
Sometime after birds started chirping I finished the game. I turned off the Xbox and pulled out my guitar. I ran through my scales and then kept working on trying to make changing notes sound right. I failed, and turned on the laptop to fumble at tabs. I've come to find out I'll never get callouses from playing guitar. I can play it for three hours, not real playing yet just making noise, and no damage to my hands. Don't know if that makes me naturally suited for the task or not. My small hands have trouble with bar chords.
Around 8AM I emailed Yuri, wishing her a good day at work. I then felt wanderlust. I packed up my cellphone charger and my DS. I headed down the hill towards Nakano Station. The sun was bright, the air was fresh. I hoped I could see Mount Fuji. I couldn't. Visibility lent only the faintest outline to the mountains west of Tokyo. Still, Yuri had recommended, if I wanted to see Fuji today, go to Kawaguchiko. I checked the train times on my phone, which said wait an hour. I didn't believe that, and headed on the first train towards where it wanted me to go.
At Kichijoji, I changed my mind. I got off the train, emailed a friend, waited three seconds, and then got back on the train. My wanderlust wasn't going to die. I checked the train times again, which again recommended waiting an hour. I started jumping to faster and faster trains on the Chuo Line. By 11:30 I was at Takao Station. Still couldn't see very far, everything faded like early 3D fog. I walked to the train I needed to take, which was coming in an hour. I'd arrive at Kawaguchiko at 3 o'clock. Not exactly what I wanted.
On the way to Takao, I had just enjoyed the view. At Takao, my patience was stretched, and I got back on the train for Tokyo. I opened up my DS and tried to play Dragon Quest IX. I managed maybe 10 minutes, before I became extremely tired. I managed to save, put away my DS, and fell promptly to sleep. When I woke up, the train was stopped at Kanda. I got off the train, and considered my next action. I had wanted to try and take advantage of deal I saw yesterday in Shinjuku. While my money was tight, there was a deal of 3 used games for half price. I decided I'd go look for three game at Akihabara.
I despise Akihabara in general, and especially on the weekend. While I enjoy video games and find parts of Akihabara extremely facisinating, the actual thing is terrifying. The maid cafes eating up money for flat cokes and parfaits with names like "Lion", "Bear", "Rabbit" and no description but a MSPaint scaled down jpeg. The maid makes sure, before you eat you make a special encantation to enrich the food with tastiness. Asking about the fact that you just spent 500 yen and the coke was flat has the maid go to the back for several minutes, and then come back to apologize for several minutes.
It causes me to revert to myself of two years ago, whose every idle thought was about death. "How would I feel if Friend A died?" "How would my family react to my death?" "Would I feel anything if Friend B was killed?" "How about if I never saw her again?" It was moderately healthy, it made me have no patience for bullshit. I still don't, but my other problem is complete bullshit. I'm not going to discuss it in this right now though.
It turned out the half price deal was half price of the lowest of the 3 items. I decided against it. Thought about the train fare for a minute, and bought one game I was going to buy anyways at the Bookoff by my house for 400 yen more than it was right now. With my game purchased, I ran out of Akihabara, and emailed my friend from Kichijoji again, told them I actually was coming to kichijoji right now, tried to play Dragon Quest again, and fell promptly asleep.
Those two naps left me refreshed. I got off the train, and tried to follow the Keio Inokashira line to Inokashira station. This was bad, as the road ended up deadending, and then turning back away from Inokashira park. I finally arrived at Inokashira station, after rediscovering just how nice Inokarshira park was on any given day. I thought back to when I lived south of Ogikubo, in a guesthouse, in an area I can no longer name. It was simply south of Ogikubo. A local stop on the Inokashira line was 13 minutes away, Ogikubo was 19. The 7-11 near the guesthouse was actually open 7-11 for unknown reasons. The only national chain convience store I had known to actually close. Still the guesthouse was clean, well maintained, and my room was near the off-limits roof, but that didn't stop me from spending any spare moment on the roof, enjoying the view of Suginami-ku.
My friend wasn't at Inokashira station, so I emailed him again, telling him I was. I went into a convience store and bought a BLT sandwhich, Red Fried Chicken, and a milk tea. The chicken was really overcooked, like it always is at the Wendy's in Ginza. I would go there for my lunch break, enjoy the terrible food that would make me feel terrible later on my non-descript english teaching job. The sandwhich was satisifying, and the milk tea was sufficintly could. My friend arrived with another friend, and we discussed leaving Japan, the south, and my mother.
I told him, "I'm really upset at the thought my mother will die before my father."
he responded, "That's kind of sick. Wishing death on your mother."
His friend responded, "No he just want's his father to live, it's positive."
I can't help feeling this way. It's difficult and not for this purpose to explain. It's a true statement though, I can't and won't deny it. My musing today made me conclude what I want is my mother's death to be a past event. I just want it to be something that has happened, and yet time kept speeding forward. I dread that my father's death will happen, and time to speed forward with my mother alive. I don't want the stress and outright hate from that chain of events.
We ended up at my friend's guesthouse watching Hurt Locker. We talked about the Iraq War, and if we knew anyone fighting in it. The movie was good, and the conversation was excellent. After the movie there was a little bit more conversation while we took turns killing each other in Modern Warfare 1. I hadn't realized how excellent multiplayer was in that game, and the matches were tense, possibly because of the prior movie.
Around 7:30PM we parted ways, I said good luck to them in their lives, and they wish me luck with my life in Texas. I went back up to Kichijoji, used a department store bathroom, and headed to the Taco Rice shop to find my friend's friend eating with a friend. He had no alarm to my company so I sat eating hungrily, probably terrifying the 3rd degree friend, while talking to the 2nd degree friend. They eventually left, I took note of where they were going so I wouldn't run into them a third time. Problem with Kichijoji, it's hard to lose someone.
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On the train home, I made plans for Tuesday. I sent my daily email to Yuri, saying Otsukaresama. She called me as I was leaving Nakano station. We talked for a bit, and then hung up when I got home. She called 20 minutes later. She started talking to me about what I need to do before I left Japan. My money situtation was still bad, so I started getting fluster, foggy. I eventually hang up the phone and laid back on my futon. I couldn't really breathe. I took my water out of the fridge and drank. I tried to waste time on the internet.
When I calmed down I called her back. She understood how much stress I had, that I just ignored. She said she missed me a lot, and I said I knew that. It's a pleasant feeling to be missed, to be wanted. From a girl like her, I had real complaints about our relationship, outside of schedule conflicts that would probably eventually end with us breaking up anyways. For me, I saw a deadline of the day I left Japan. I'm not sure what she saw.
"So let's have a baby!"
"Let's not have that joke again."
"But it's fun!"
I keep think she's my kind of jokingly serious about this.
"I don't want to get pregnant. I don't want to be a single mother."
"And I don't want to be a runaway father."
"We don't have any money."
We have this same conversation, about once a week. I think she's trying to convince herself it's a bad idea, and I'm just having idle phone conversation. Eventually it ends, an hour later she calls back, she says she misses me, I say we have nothing to talk about. It goes on for about 10 minutes, and I tell her good night again.
Around 1AM I start reading Dance Dance Dance, by Haruki Murakami. The book had been given to me by a friend who was leaving Tokyo and possibly Japan. I never figured out which. It was the last time I saw him, trying to decide which was going to happen. He gave me a bunch of stuff, movies, games, books, things I had to deal with getting rid of. This was the only book I hadn't read so I decided to read it for him.
I put on Chung-King Express, a suitably Murakami movie, as background noise. I fell into the book as I had read the prequel "A Wild Sheep Chase" a few months earlier, and started reading "A Wild Sheep Chase" in Japanese a month after that. I eventually let it sit in my bag, and then in my kitchen stand. I keep looking at it, asking myself how I'm going to get rid of the kitchen stand, and telling myself to pick up and read more of the tiny Japanese book.
I stopped Chung-King Express right before the police officer discovers the girl in his apartment. I turned off the Xbox and TV and turned on the airconditioner. I kept reading.
At page 232 I decided to get some sleep. I brushed my teeth, read to the end of the chapter, and closed the book, spat out, gargled and went to bed.
On August 17th, 2009 I woke up at 2PM to an email from Yuri, telling me to tell her when I would leave my apartment. I told her I still didn't know. I ended up saying, "3pm! I don't know!"
"Is 3pm okay?"
"YES ITS OKAY ILL HAVE MOVED OUT THE DAY BEFORE."
There's really no use for apostrophes in phone emails. I let out a long sigh and look around my room. My final days in Tokyo were happening, and I was stuck with a terrible sleep schedule. 2pm. Most of the day was already over. I needed to sell some games still though. So I found my large Yodabashi Camera bag I had bought my Hori Real Arcade Pro in. I looked around. A bunch of controllers and AV Cables, some gamecube games, a gamecube, and Donkey Kong Jungle Beat. My Craigslist ad had been a failure. With only one man asking if I wanted to ship the stuff to America. I almost made an ebay auction right then, then figured calculating shipping was going to be a regular pain in the ass. On top of the bag I put a large red and black scarf that was free with a tshirt. I don't want people to see I'm caring a gamesystem. That's asking for trouble. Not the giant Yodobashi bag, that's okay. I put on my muji sandels, and thought, "not going to do a lot of walking today."
I stepped out the door and observed the sky. Like every day recently, it looked like it was going to rain. It probably was going to rain, the question was when and for how long. I'd been asleep until 2pm, maybe the rain had already happened. I thought back to how the friend had been posting the weather forcasts on the internet. They had been the same for about two months. "Probably going to rain."
The nice thing about living in Nakano is it's home to its own mini Akihabara, Nakano Broadway. I picked up my bag of games, put on my sandals and walked down to Nakano station. The banjo band that I was usually familiar from being in front of Ogikubo station on Friday nights was playing on a Friday afternoon.
Ogikubo.
Ogikubo. There's a town with special meaning. Outside of being the town the main character lives in Haruki Murakami's South of the Border, West of the Sun, Its where a main a main character in my life had lived for a while, and where I had lived for a while. Two years ago I had a terrible idea. To go to Japan and find a job. My only sure thing was a friend had said I could sleep on his couch. I looked over at that couch now. I sat down on it. That couch had become my couch, and had been causing me aggravation recently. The friend had asked, "Can I have my couch back?"
There was complication in that statement. I hadn't realized he still considered ownership of the couch, moreover how the couch had come to me. Not for him, but for me there was a lot of uncleared air between us. I had recently decided to say fuck that air and the man behind it. The headache wasn't worth it.
The band was playing wonderful dixieland music as they had in winter in Ogikubo. Now it was summer in Nakano. My days were coming to and end, and I was starting it at 3pm. I kept going, thinking about delicious curry I wouldn't get.
For Monday afternoon, Mandarake in the Broadway was crowded. I had to wait 5 minutes to be given a number, and another 10 for a guy to tell me everything wasn't perfect enough to be taken. I rolled my eyes and went to another store. There I waited an hour to be told my Gamecube was worth 500 yen, and Donkey Kong was 100 yen. I blinked at him. The customers I had been pissing off for thirty minutes by taking up the only register ignored me. I asked a disgruntled "100 yen?!" I told him to cancel it, and thanks for wasting an hour of my life. Why did it even take an hour to find that out?
Then he started to repack the Gamecube box. I had very very carefully packed that box before so that everything fit. He didn't make it fit, but started jamming everything inside and bending the box. "This is the country with immaculate used items?" came from my disbelief. I told him, "JESUS you're bending the box, give it here." I packed everything nicely again after 3 or 4 minutes. I wanted to give him the finger, then I realized he might as well just work in America. Fuck ever coming to this store again.
A third store would give me decent prices for the gamecube games, and 600 yen for the Gamecube. Donkey Kong was going to net me 10 yen. I once again blinked the employee, this time a girl, probably a freshman in college. Hai! "Let's cancel that." "Of course!" She said with a, "Yeah I can see where you're coming from", look. I walked out of the store with 1600 yen, a lighter bag, and a stomach reminder that I still hadn't eaten today.
I wouldn't eat for several more hours. That didn't stop me from eating fried chicken from the nearest FamilyMart. While eating the chicken and thinking about reading the rest of Murakami, I found my feet were taking me to Ogikubo. I hadn't planned on that, but there was one more possible store along the way that had the possibility of giving me more money for Jungle Beat. That paid off with 500 yen. These guys would end up giving me 500 yen more later, several times, for things much larger than a pair of fake-real bongos. My own apathy got the best of me in that situation. Fighting for 500 yen, and not willing to go the distance for 5000.
That's what life was leading up to me before I left Tokyo. And hungry is what led me into waking out of that depressing thought into Ogikubo. The sun lay slightly above the apartment complexes, casting almost everything in to shadow, despite the blinding post-apocalyptic sky that inhabits Tokyo every afternoon. I had the fear that my previously Ogikubo based friend might be around, despite that he lived somewhere else now. We continued to have awkward meetings right up to the 2 days before I left Japan.
That wouldn't happen today. I enjoyed browsing the football field sized Book-Off, thinking about when I had to browse this book-off to stay warm. Ogikubo held a lot of memories about staying warm. The hunger kept growing inside me, and I put down the gravure idol book I wouldn't buy. I checked my cellphone for the time. I hurried over to pick up two Ogikubo Donuts. That isn't the real name of the shop, but I haven't had donuts like these anywhere else. They are freshly fried donuts, with no sugar and no toppings. Just deliciously fried dough. I put them in my bag with the intension of having them after dinner, despite they would be cold by then. The donut stand would also had been closed by then, so it was now or never for after dinner donuts. I stepped over to Tomato Ramen and looked in. I decided against it and walked 50 meters passed it away from everything worth seeing. I turned around and walked back in.
I patronized this shop with fair regularly for two years. I thought about this being my last bowl of the delicious ramen for many months. Neither of the shop clerks I recognized, so I didn't feel bad about not saying goodbyes. I took great pleasure in eating my delightful combination of tomatoes, noodles, garlic, and Parmesan cheese. Despite it being the middle of summer, it warmed my bones like it had been Feburary.
With one wish conquered, I headed to the depressing little coffee shop. The shop was built into a department store, but only accessible from outside the building, and to my knowledge not affialiated in any way with the store. I wanted to drink coffee and finish my book. I held fears the next day I would wake up with a pounding coffee-deprived headache. That didn't happen, but my body still took the coffee slowly and gratefully. The pages of Dance, Dance, Dance kept dancing. Things weren't following into place in the story, but my life in Tokyo would soon be carefully falling apart.
Eventually the coffee was drank, and Dance, Dance, Dance ran out of pages with to dance. I stared out at the depressing coffee shop. It was mildly worn down, and only smelled slightly like cigarettes. There were older women on the other side smoking, and I was glad I had got to enjoy my time with minimal tobacco. I sniffed my shirt and thought, "I'll still have to wash this."
Reading a Murakami novel gives me a great sense of filling. Like after a delicious bowl of ramen, but for my mind. I decided that I didn't want to go home, and that I should have worn shoes, not sandals. My feet were alreadly mildly blistered. My common sense didn't stop me paying for my meal, using the bathroom, and then taking off south of Ogikubo station.
One of the places I had lived was a guesthouse roughly twenty minutes from Ogikubo station. I started off in that direction, around 8pm. I wanted to make it to the Yamada Denki that was mysteriously located on the highway I was walking along. Not near any stations, or any real landmarks, a giant electronics store existed. I checked my cellphone's GPS and roughly calculated I would arrive before the store closed. This didn't leave me time to take a detour to the guest house, though I'm not sure why I would do that. There was nothing for me at the electronics store and I was doing that, so my judging of my own actions was failing.
The walk drove on, and I came to start forming writing about this day in my head, as an example of how I thought, and how I lived in Tokyo. How I would spend my time without any friends, or others. This was a perfectly normal day. I looked around and took in how weird the area was. It's dark and empty and soul-vacanting. It's highway country. Trains don't touch this place. You need a car, or an insane wish to walk everywhere to get there.
I kept checking the bus times I was walked on though. It was running late, the buses were running less, but I could still catch one back to Ogikubo. My feet were wishing I would, and I kept wanting to the electronics store. Putting one foot in front of the other, you end up places. I ended up looking at the used games wishing there was something worth spending my store points on. There wasn't, they were also open until 10PM, and it was 8:55. I was covered in sweat. I found myself smelling awful, and wishing I had some Axe spray to hide that fact. Defeated in finding bargains, I walked downstairs, and used their bathroom. The intercom reminded me that I could validate my parking (where else would you go from here?) And that they thank you for shopping at Yamada Denki.
Exiting the bathroom exhausted, I tore off my ipod and took a break before the walk back. The wall sized mirrors told me I looked awful. Being white probably helped that. Neatly dressed people with real jobs moved in and out of the store a pace slightly greater than I would have expected from the the time and place. I opened up my bag.
"Oh yeah!" half-exclamation, half-remembrance I found myself digging into the Ogikubo Donut. It was delicious, even cold and getting staler by the second. Now I was a sweat covered exhausted white man digging into a donut in an electronics store in the middle of nowhere, and open for someone's convenience until 10PM.
I started walking back, hoping to catch a bus to Ogikubo, otherwise I'd be home by midnight. My feet were blistering hard, and my cellphone was ringing with Yuri. I told her where I was, She screamed, "Why are you there?" "Because I ended up here." I tried to catch to walk on a crosswalk to the side of the street I needed buses to be going, but at the top of the stairs was a giant roach. I head back down. My body doesn't handle roaches well. It starts shivering and wanting to scream. I've gotten used to this, but now my conscious brain goes "OH shit a roach, my body is about to shut down!" There's a cycle that isn't going to break easily.
I ended up not getting on the correct side of the street, and walking all the way back to Ogikubo. At that point I considered a taxi back to Nakano. I took a train. The air conditioning hit my full force and my body collapsed. I pulled out and hastily ate my other donut. I looked ridiculous. I had spent the money I had walked around all day to get to eat. I needed a shower something fierce. The positive, I gave myself, was there was no money spent today. That's good enough, and that shower was more than enough to finish off August 17th.
current music: Bomb the Music Industry! - 25!
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