I read the news today. sigh.

I am Christian, Muslim, Jewish. I am ALL religion, and I HATE you! You should DIE because you don't genuflect before my idea of God. You should DIE because my moral code is superior to yours!

I am a Patriot, and I HATE you! You should DIE because you don't love and worship my country as much as I do. You should DIE because you come to my country and do not act as I think you should.

I am white, black, brown, and yellow, and I HATE you! You should DIE because you are DIFFERENT than me and that FRIGHTENS me!

I am a Politician, and I HATE you! You should DIE because you do not believe in the utopia my corporate overlords wish for you!

I am HUMAN!  Hear me HATE!

Orgasmatron
By Motorhead

I am the one, Orgasmatron, the outstretched grasping hand
My image is of agony, my servants rape the land
Obsequious and arrogant, clandestine and vain
Two thousand years of misery of torture in my name
Hypocrisy made paramount, paranoia the law
My name is called religion, sadistic, sacred whore

I twist the truth, I rule the world, my crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies, you grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you, your downfall is my gain
And still you play the sycophant and revel in my pain
And all my promises are lies, all my love is hate
I am the politician and I decide your fate

I march before a martyred world, an army for the fight
I speak of great heroic days, of victory and might
I hold a banner drenched in blood, I urge you to be brave
I lead you to your destiny, I lead you to your grave
Your bones will build my palace, your eyes will stud my crown
For I am Mars, the God of war and I will cut you down

Wow! Wasn't sure this thing was still here.

Well hello,

I have decided to shovel the dust off the old blog and see if I can't find some inspiration. It's been over a year since I last posted.  Things are going quite well.  I have a good job.  Rebecca and I are getting along swimmingly, and the weather finally got cool enough, so I'm not sweating my butt off every time I breathe. Can't complain at all.

I'm going to kick off the renewal with a tale of dreams.

For the past 10 years or so, I have had this recurring nightmare that involves mostly unseen evil of a powerful nature, and more often than not wakes me up with a shout and gasping for breath.  There was a particularly dark point when I was in Korea, where I literally thought I might be going insane. I would wake up not knowing whether what happened in the dream was real or not. There was a slip in reality that frightened me quite badly.

The source of the evil in the dreams was a children's book which always reminded me of Eric Carle's, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Most of the time, I could never get near the book because the evil emanating from it was too powerful. Over the years, I was able to touch the book about four of five times and able to open it twice. The first time I got to open the book - you have to understand that, in the dream, this was a monstrous struggle - I saw the number 2, and on the second time, there was the number 7.  I have no idea what it means other than this nightmare has been with me for a long, long time, and the struggle is difficult and terrifying every time.

Last night, the dream returned. This time was different because the details are much sharper than they have been in the past.  Whereas before, I could never quite tell where I was, this time I was very distinctly in a classroom in a fairly large school building. The book was on a lone desk in the middle of the class. I was actually able to walk right up to the book, and everything was kosher until I opened it. When I lifted the cover, a violent blast of energy threw me back across the room. I got up, and struggled forward to the book as if I was leaning into a full force gale. I pushed and pushed forward.  I finally made it to the desk.  The book was opened to the page with the 2 on it. Holding onto the desk for dear life, I was able to reach up and tear the page out of the book.  There was a great whoosh as the room expanded outward, stretching like a room in a cartoon and then snapping back into place.  The classroom had transformed into a gymnasium with folded up bleachers and twin sets of red, pad-locked, double-doors.  There was a great crash at the doors as two maniacal janitor figures tried to break into the gym.  As they snarled and pushed and stretched through the doors, things got sketchy and I woke up.

I have no idea what happened to the book or the page that I was able to tear out.  But I do know that when I woke up, I felt as if some corner has been turned in my subconscious.  I'm not sure the war is over, but a battle has been won.

Traveling, Typhoons, and other mundane reasons for living!

Howdy folks.  It's been a while since I traveled the dusty halls of blog land. Things are...well...things.  The exciting/terrifying/eagerly anticipated (which may be the same thing as exciting, but what the hell) thing that is going on, is that on Friday, I will start my new job. I will not start teaching on Friday because these folks are very serious.  I will start a month long orientation to prepare me to teach for Kang Chiao International School.  This, my friends, is a real job.  I haven't had one of these in a long time.  Now, while I am looking forward to the challenge, I am also thinking to myself, "Holy crap! I'm actually going to have to do some work!"  Talley Ho! and what not!

Last week, Rebecca and I joined her co-workers on a company sponsored trip to the eastern coast Taiwan cities of Hualien and Taitung. There were about 40 odd folks on the trip from the two branches of Rebecca's company including employees and their families or friends. Now, I've never actually been on one of these scripted tours where you are at the mercy of the schedule, which led to my being a tad grumpy the first day because things were moving faster than I would have preferred.  Rebecca however, put and end to that by telling me to suck it up and go with the flow. Me, being the dutiful husband...cough...gasp...did what I was told and ended up having a good time over all.  I knew I loved that woman for some reason.  Anyway, we toured part of Toroko National Park that Rebecca and I hadn't been to before (see previous post). The Baiyang Waterfall Trail is a winding trail through a deep gorge marked by a number of tunnels blasted through the cliffs that ultimately leads to an underground waterfall that you can stand if you wish.  I wasn't so interested in the waterfall, but there were a number of places where the water in the river at the bottom of the gorge pooled in such an inviting way that I really wanted to go in. Unfortunately, sheer drops of 50-100 or more feet generally discouraged this. It's beautiful country regardless, and if you ever travel to Taiwan, it is well worth the visit.

The next day, we headed off to a clam museum. I opted to wander around outside since the whole thing was in Chinese, and I really don't like clams that much. One of the things that you could do, was jump in a pond and dig for clams. Once you got the clams, then you could bring them to the little restaurant area, where they would cook 'em up for you and you could have a feast.  Fortunately for me, many of Rebecca's co-workers are beer drinkers, so while they ate their clams, I got to drink beer. This is always a good thing. After the clam thing, we all got on the bus, and the tour guide broke out the karaoke machine. Now, I was not aware of this (although the clues have been there now that I think about it), but my wife is a karaoke queen. She even has a pretty decent voice.  The bottom line is, Rebecca LOVES karaoke (we were on a Noraebus, for my Korean friends, lol). I did my duty and sang a couple of songs, but the fact that it was the middle of the day, and I wasn't blind drunk, my singing voice was not at it's best. We finally arrived at the hotel - all the hotels were very nice - but this one was kind of like Disneyland.  It had a swimming pool, a bar, game rooms with billiards and table tennis among other things, and live music (I often want to ask the guys that play in these hotel cover bands what they do for "real" music, but a gig is a gig I suppose. After going for a swim in the pool, Rebecca and I met some of her co-workers and proceeded to down three cases of beer in one of the rooms. Now Rebecca is not what you would call a drinker by any means, and in truth, she does not approve of my predilection for the the sweet, delectable, barley and hops beverage.  However, she is a good sport and only gave me a couple of sideways glances.

Too be continued (with photos)...

What happened America?

I don't understand my country anymore.  A country built by immigrants that now hates immigrants.  A country that claims to respect the individual freedoms of all its citizens but truly only respects the rights of those citizens who can pay for them.  A country that believes in liberty, freedom of speech and freedom of religion but only as long as it is the RIGHT kind of speech or the RIGHT kind of religion. A country that spends trillions of dollars to send young men and women to fight and die in stupid, useless wars yet can't find the cash to properly care for those young men and women when they come home crippled and maimed.  A country that says, "Hey. You're poor? FUCK you!  A country built on compromise and intellectual ideas that now seems to believe that compromise is a dirty word and that ideas and intelligence are some sort of cancer. A country that will will get all gussied up this coming weekend to celebrate the independence of a nation that no longer knows who or what it is.

That makes me sad.

Sunday Morning

Well, it's a lazy Sunday morning.  I'm having my coffee, watching baseball, and doing some laundry. The real decision to be made is whether to start studying for the Chinese test I have tomorrow or take a nap ... zzzzzzzzzzzz ...

Random thoughts

I have found that being out of work for an extended period of time can actually work your nerves a little bit. I find myself happily cleaning the bathrooms, mopping to floors and taking random walks along with hours of wasted time playing around on the computer.  I'm sure that a couple of months after I start working again, I will be pining for the lost hours of freedom, but at the moment, I'm simply bored.

One way that I am going to relieve the tediousness is by taking what I think is an absurdly expensive intensive Chinese course at the Chinese Culture University Mandarin Learning Center. While the name of the place is certainly a mouthful, I have read some pretty good reviews about their courses.  It's going to be a challenge because it's three hours a day, five days a week, and I think it's going to be one of those courses where missing one class will put you almost too far behind to catch back up.  Anyway, I'm up for the challenge. The main reason I want to do this is because I've been spending a lot of time with Rebecca's family and while they are super friendly and try to include me as much as possible, their lack of English and my lack of Chinese means that I am often the odd guy out.  I can't expect Rebecca to translate everything. So we'll see how it goes.  Maybe I'll actually become proficient in Chinese.  Of course I said that about Korean as well and after 14 years living in Korea, couldn't hold a conversation to save my life.

Not much else going on really. Just killing time until my job starts in late July.  ...And so it goes.

Random Stuff

First of all, for all you who may be interested, I am now employed.  I will be working for the Kang Chiao International School.  I'll be teaching English.  Mostly I'll be teaching TOEIC and TOEFL stuff, but the school offers a lot of English literature classes as well as social studies classes which I may also get the opportunity to teach. I'm thinking this is going to turn out to be a really good job.  The only thing I'm not thrilled with is that I'll have a two hour commute each way which will make for a long day.  That said, I'm actually really excited to get started.  I'll begin July 25th.  In the interim I'm going to have to find some things to do to keep me from going cock-eyed with boredom.  I figure taking a Chinese class will be part of it, but I don't know what else yet.

The other thing that happened to me is that I discovered my sciatic nerve. Now those of you who have had experience with this wonder of the human anatomy know very well that it is literally a pain in the ass. Anyway, Rebecca sent me off to the National Taiwan University Hospital to get myself checked out.  This was an adventure in and of itself.  Following the signs that supposedly lead you to the Family Health Care clinic, I walked through a door which led me too a hallway that had a ceiling only an inch over my head.  Not only that, but as I'm walking around I'm noticing that there's not much in the way of hospital type stuff going on, but that it's mostly small restaurants and convenience stores. So here I am, crouched over because I can't stand up straight due to the ceiling height, staring at people slurping up nodles and wondering what in the Hell have I got myself into.  I finally find another sign that has an arrow pointing up some stairs and says Family Health Care.  I follow and wind up in what seems to be the oncology lab.  The first person who looked like they worked there that I talked to sort of looked at me and ran.  So I did the next logical thing and called Rebecca, so that she could talk to someone and get me headed in the right direction.  I finally get sent to the hospital lobby.  Now when I got to the lobby, I was immediate reminded of a really crowded night market.  There were five different sets of windows all labeled cashier and five million people milling around in what has to be some sort of organized fashion but at first glance was simply chaos.  I stood in the middle of this, staring around in all directions and just laughing to myself thinking, "What the fuck do I do now?"  Finally, Rebecca sent me a text with what I was looking for written in Chinese, and nice little helper woman got me pointed in the right direction.  I got to the doctor, she told me I was suffering from a pinch sciatic nerve and prescribed some mild painkillers.   This led to my next adventure.

The painkillers weren't doing much good, so Rebecca suggested that I should try acupuncture. I've never tried it before but had always heard positive things. Given that my hip was bothering me in a big way, I said, "What the Hell."  I got to the clinic this morning and in short order was talking to the doctor who spoke excellent English and explained the process to me.  It was all very civilized.  The only kink in the works came when I had a fit of giggles thinking of the picture I must have presented laying there on my side with needles sticking out of my butt. Laughing makes your body move. Moving makes you able to feel the needles, which is a tad uncomfortable.  So far, the pain is gone, but we'll see how long it lasts.  The Doc said to go back Monday if the pain persists, so I will do that.

That is all for now...