sex warehouse

Happy new year!

Contrary to the false alarm on my wikipedia entry that proclaimed I died on Xmas day in Dallas, I am alive, kicking, and apparently, blogging too!

More about that later.

As I was saying, Happy New Year!

You know who is NOT happy today?



Me.

You know who is even more unhappy than me today?




The thousands of maggots that lived in my fridge and just got killed.









(Although maggots probably do not know it's New Year today... But still... Generally an unhappy day for them.)


Yup. Disgusting.


You are probably wondering why my fridge was in this state. Maybe one day Mike and I will look back upon this story and laugh about it, but not right now.


So anyway... As you already know, we left on 10th of Dec for Dallas, and just reached Singapore on NYE at 1am. That's 22 days including time zone differences.

Before we left the house, we made sure all windows got shut and turned off all our electrical applicances.

Mike said, "Let's just hit the braker, make sure everything is off."

"Okay!" I chirped.

So with that, we turned off the main power supply and left the house with no electricity on - at all.


Two hours later, we were seated on the plane to Korea when I gasped.

"What?!" Mike said.

"The fridge. Oh my god," I replied.

"Oh shit... It's off isn't it? Oh shit." Mike sighed. "I'm so sorry baby... I just didn't realise..."

"Me neither... Oh well, it probably would just go bad... Flies can't go in and lay eggs, can they? It's sealed shut..."



WELL APPARENTLY THEY CAN!


Little fuckers!!!!!!!!!


The moment we opened our door, the stench was so overpowering it seriously like... knocked me backwards. The entire house stank so bad, I had gagging reflexes as I ran to open the balcony door and all windows.

The fridge had a pool of ambiguous brown liquid leaked out underneath it.

That brown liquid had flies on it.


"Maybe it's melted chocolate. I have some chocolate inside," I said hopefully. Doesn't smell like it though.

"I'd bet it's the ground beef..." Mike being ever the pessimist.


We knew we had a packet of nuggets (sealed) some hot dogs (sealed), and some ground beef (not securely sealed in cling wrap). That's all the meat we had.


We were both wrong.

We turned on the fridge to freeze whatever vermin which might be living inside to death first, and finally worked up our courage to open the fridge door the next morning.

Armed with insecticide, we opened it and jumped away in case anything would hop out and leech themselves onto us.

A cloud of opaque air gushed out of the freezer...

OMG....... The smell...... The wiggling of thousands of worms......


I've never been more disgusted in my whole fucking life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


"Are you taking a picture?!!" Mike said indignantly at me as I clicked away. Yeah... Good blogging material what!

"Do you really want to remember this moment?" He asked amidst making gagging noises.

"Might be funny later," I shrugged.


And in case you are wondering, the white towel is my gas mask for the day.


So we started cleaning it - Throwing away EVERYTHING inside.


The brown liquid came from a hugeass packet of frozen (once upon a time) chicken breast fillets that we both forgot existed.


It is so muthafucking soggy and disgusting.

The ice trays had ice in it and dead maggots UNDERNEATH the ice.

I only took one picture of the maggots because I ran away after that. Those you see is just a small part of what was actually there.

The inside of the fridge had way more, and there was a palm-sized area that was soooooo full of eggs stuck there, the entire area was just brown in colour.


The smell... Did I already talk about the smell??

It smelt exactly like how the lizard that dead in my computer cables smelt like. Like a somewhat salty, sour smell. A little like dried sotong but 1000 times worse.

And... It goes deep into your nose canal and stays there so that you can still smell it hours later. If you breathe through your mouth, you can even taste it somewhat.

Mike shoo-ed me away to hose all the maggots away... He is so goddamn brave, I tell you.




One hour later Mike cleared most of the stuff off. Maggots 101: They are sticky!

My turn. I scrubbed "egg marks" off with a toothbrush, wiped down all nooks and crevices with a soapy hand towel, then wiped down all surfaces with a dettol-infused hand towel (burns like bleach), then wiped everything with soap again.

All while gagging consistently at the horrible smell.



Dismantled the fridge to clean everything out. The maggots even got inside the back plate of the fridge, those little fuckers!!


Dettol is awesome!


And then I squeegeed maggot eggs and excess water off the wet floor into the drains.











There.

We thought after few hours of slogging (mostly Mike slogged coz he reckoned it is his fault) the fridge is spanking clean, even though it still stunk like hell.


So we let it air-dry, went out for lunch, and brought charcoal deodorizer and baking soda.


When we went back home, to my horror, I saw a maggot crawling on the goddamn door! WTFWTFWTF!!! How is that possible?!

(I sprayed it with insecticide to watch it die first. That felt good.)


The answer was that the insides of the rubber flaps that sealed the fridge shut was still bloody infested with eggs and maggots!!! Muthafuckers!


Honestly man... We should've just thrown the bloody fridge away and bought a goddamn new one for our landlord. He can't possibly mind... This fridge is so old and small anyway.

About $400 for a fridge like that... I'd pay double that amount to not have to deal with this shit!


Imagine that.

Some unknowing fucker would open that fridge door, thinking he might be able to get a free fridge from the rubbish pile... AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! It won't be us getting that gush of maggoty fragrance! Orh bi for being a greedy poke!


Sigh. If the smell doesn't clear up, I'm really gonna get a new fridge. I honestly cannot imagine eating any food out of that fridge, ever again.

Cheers!Aren't you happy you are not me?!


Well... The good thing is... my year can only get better!



So yeah... Someone edited my wiki page to say that I died in a car crash during Xmas day when I was driving alone in Dallas. The person even included the time - approximately 5.30pm!

Creative, huh?!

At precisely that time I was actually in Mike's mom's place eating a sumptuous Xmas dinner of Alaskan crab legs dipped in melted butter.

I was aboard the plane on NYE and was just about to turn off my phone before the plane took off, when Ming called me all the way from Bangkok to USA through Singaporean phone lines.

"Are you ok?" he asked. "Someone wrote on your wiki page you died!"

"Of course I am ok lah! Won't it be fucking scary if I am dead and talking to you now?" I laughed.

After I hung up I felt a bit scared. What if my plane crashed and I died on NYD? Won't it be infinitely morbid?!

But I survived the flights even though they were not very pleasant.


Good joke, whoever you are!!!!!!


I hope you die in a car crash too! :) Remember to let me know during your last surviving moments so I can update your wiki page also, k? What do you mean how? Email me lah! Xiaxue@gmail.com! Oh right... You don't have a wiki page because you are not important enough. Oh well...


But honestly though... I quite understand.

I mean this fucker, whoever he is, actually was online during Xmas day, went to the wikipedia page of a virtual stranger, and entertained himself by editing it with my death.

That about sums up the Xmas Day plans of the biggest loser in the world.

Honestly, shouldn't you be eating turkey with parents who love you and opening presents from people who cared about your existance??


I sound like I am angry, but I actually found this whole thing pretty funny.

Shin Min also called me to ask me to comment about this! They must have found it funny too. :D


I'll update with USA pics soon!!


p/s:

He is going to show her off but not how you see her now. He is going to Show here off to Odessa members tonight on new years eve stripped naked.

Tonight at midnight you can catch me out on one of are Odessa blogs 100% naked seeing in the new year.This post will be up for five minutes only as i see the new year in naked on Odessa.Have fun and we might see the new year in together naked tonight.

OK so while you lucky lot have had your feet up i have been working on the farm Christmas day and boxing day.Today is rest day as dad and mum are home so dad will now take over the farm from me.I hope you all had a nice holiday but as far as I'm concerned I'm so pleased Christmas has gone and back to normal.

My boyfriend wants me to show my self naked to to new friends of his.Tonight i will strip my cloths off for to strange men but have done this before as my guy loves to show me off to his friends.He does not have many friends who have not seen me with no cloths on and it gives me a kick to when i see there faces when i stand in front of them naked.

DID THEY OR NOT THATS THE QUESTION

WHAT DID THEY DO PHOTOS

We were out walking my boyfriend and i and i went to pick up something i saw on the ground and he flicked my skirt up and took this photo.He then put his fingers in my knickers and pulled them down and before i knew it i was on my back with him on top of me and the rest is history.

Can you strip her?

Not looking forward to Christmas as home alone my boyfriend is away with his family and my family are away to.I must stay behind and look after the farm over Christmas so no Christmas Cher for me this year.Happy Christmas to any one who ever takes the time to read this.

This is a new challenge blog for Odessa and will i hope be up and working on Odessa in the new year.Come and join us and make Odessa what you want it to be.

Advertorial

Ever felt like this before?



After a long day of wearing lens, or just being awake, your eyes feel so lifeless and tired?

Tadah!!

I just got sponsored Garnier's Light Brightening Eye Roll-On!!


It's a great invention and I'm surprised that it took humankind so long to develop something like this!


The Roll-on comes in a slim and cute little tube like this - and to soothe puffy or tired eyes, all you have to do is to roll it on!

It uses a state-of-the-art roll-on to massage away tiredness from your eyes, and massaging is a technique used by experts to boost natural draining and decongest tired eyes!

With a stroke of genius, Garnier also added CAFFEINE into the roll-on - that acts as a natural simulant to boost your circulation and give an extra perk to your eyes!


Cleverly, the roll-on comes with an extremely convenient little metal ball to aid your application.

The metal ball is cold and damn shiok! Now I won't fall asleep during MJ anymore!!

No more messing around with eye creams (God I hate those, I can never properly dig the cream out with long nails) or feeling ridiculous when you bring your eye cream out with you.

This one fits right into any handbag!




Garnier also came up with a cute application for phones!

Ever wished you had a Magic 8 ball to bring around with you in case of tough decisions? Well, here's one for your phone, FREE!!

You can download it here and it's super easy!

The game is really simple - your sunny yellow roll-on helps you decide whether you should ROLL WITH IT, or ROLL AWAY!





Well, since I was at home that night, I obviously had loads of things to decide on.


For example ---



Having satisfied my stomach, I skip around trying to find other things to Roll with.



FUN ISN'T IT?!

Remember to visit Rollwithit.com.sg to download this cute game on your mobile for free!



** I do not encourage using this method to decide on whether you oughta murder tonight, or do other illegal things. I'm quite sure the judge will not accept this as an excuse.


P/s: Yes I am aware I got loads of black roots showing. I'm about to go dye it already la, ok! Quit harping on it!

If you you like a good challenge then this blog is for you.Odessa has two or three challenge blogs and we have spot the difference,combination lock blog and more.Challenger is not just fun and a good challenge if you get a challenge right try your answer in the password box to challenger album and see the girls nude photos.

Yesterday My Neighbor phoned and asked my boyfriend if he could have some eggs and my boyfriend told him i would bring them round in a half hour.My boyfriend said to me will you let him fuck you if i come with you.I said yes you know i will if that's what you want.We went to his house with his eggs and he said come in so we did and i started to get undressed in his hall way.He said what are you doing i said giving you and my boyfriend what you want.He said i have not asked for anything and i replied to him no you have not but i know why you wanted me to bring your eggs round here and it was not to pay me for them but for me to strip my cloths of for you again but this time you can fuck me while my boyfriend gets his kicks out of us. I got hold of his hand and took him into the kitchen and sat him down on a chair and i straddled him and sat on his lap.I lifted my self up a bit and he got his cock and pushed it into me and started to fuck me for about five minutes and then he shouted out I'm going to cum get up off me i said no let it go and he pumped his cum inside me.I stayed there for a min or two and then got up when i was sure he had pumped all of his cum inside me. When i got up and off him his cum ran down my legs and then i knew he had enjoyed the ride and also knew he would want more soon.
THIS POST ON MAIN BLOG ON ODESSA HAS PHOTOS ON IT AS HAVE MOST OF THE POSTS.

MY NEIGHBOR AND ME

...but thanks to Jonathan Messinger at Time Out Chicago for doing some creative math and including a mention of the book in his year-end round-up of the Best of 2008.

First the administrative stuff:

Tomorrow, Dec. 20, 2008 we’ll have our all-day Zen thing at Hill Street Center (details at link to your left). There will be no prepared lunch this time. I’ll be having a peanut butter sandwich at HSC. Others are welcome to join me. But bring your own sandwiches.

Also, I have updated my tour dates (link also to your left). If you want me to come to your town, please write me at spoozilla@gmail.com and we’ll try to work it out. I will have a lot of available dates (see below for details on that).

Now the article:

Shukke (spelled 出家 in Chinese characters) means leaving home and family. In the olden days, Buddhists monks literally left everything behind when they joined the order. These days the word shukke mainly refers to a ceremony that symbolically represents that act, although the monks themselves often continue to live as they did before.

Different lineages of Buddhism handle it in different ways. I’ve heard that in Thailand the custom is that one literally leaves home and family for a time but then comes back after a proscribed period. Sort of like doing a tour of duty in the armed forces. In Japanese-style Zen, though, it’s pretty rare to actually leave everything behind.

Whatever. I’m bringing it up today because yesterday I left my family of 14 years. For the past year I’ve been in a state of limbo with the Japanese monster movie company that sent me to Los Angeles to be their liaison. I got laid off at the end of 2007. But at the beginning of 2008 they said they wanted me back to work on a film project in the USA and so I began working for them again in a limited capacity. That film project never quite got off the ground. In September I went and met with them and they asked me to come back to Japan to do essentially the same job I used to do when I last lived there.

But I wasn’t really interested in doing that job again and, as much as I love Japan, I didn’t really feel like moving back there. Everybody keeps saying how the US economy is falling to pieces and I was being offered a relatively secure job with a steady paycheck at a stable company in a country where the economy was not going down the drain. So I thought hard about whether I ought to take the job or not.

This week I finally gave them my answer. I said no thank you in as polite a way as possible. They accepted and now I’m a free man. That company was very much like a family to me and leaving them was not easy. The photo I posted above was staged spontaneously by a bunch of guys from the Events Dept. as a surprise going-away gift in 2004 when I was just about to leave for LA. That's my family.

It was also a tough decision to make because the most rational, sensible course of action would have been to go to Japan. Try as I might I couldn’t make it add up any other way. I’m making a little bit of money off book sales. But if you average out what I get paid for a book compared to how long it takes to write one, my annual wage from writing is not impressive at all. I know there are professional authors whose sales are less than Eckhart Tolle’s and Deepak Chopra’s but who manage somehow. But I don’t know how. Guess I’ll find out.

It was a classic example of the Monty Hall Dilemma. Actually I didn’t even know there was such a thing as the Monty Hall Dilemma until I did a Google search just now. I was trying to remember the name of the game show hosted by Monty Hall in which contestants were given a choice between say, a year’s supply of Turtle Wax and whatever was behind door number three, which could have been something better than the Turtle Wax, like a brand new car, or could have been a bail of hay or a goat or something. Turns out the show was called Let’s Make a Deal. I can’t believe I wasted several hours of my precious and fleeting life watching Let’s Make a Deal. But I suppose it did me some good after all.

ANYWAY, the thing was that even though my rational mind told me the best way to go was to take the job in Japan, my instincts told me otherwise. And it wasn’t just my own rational mind that said it was a bad idea to turn down the job in Japan either. Everyone I spoke to about the matter, including two Zen teachers, told me the most sensible course of action was to go to Japan.

But in the end I made the irrational choice. Actually, though, I wouldn’t call it irrational. I’d call it intuitive. Intuition isn’t really irrational. It has its own sense.

Have I made the right choice? Who knows? Not me. When faced with decisions like these we never really know what the “right choice” is. I’m not even sure the concept of there being a right choice is very sound to begin with.

In Buddhism we always say that when you’re faced with a decision, the true way to go appears instantly. But we’re so locked into our thinking mind that we can miss it very easily. Still, once you’ve made your choice the only thing you can do is find a way to make that choice work.

In spite of everything, I feel good about this. It’s a bit of a test, though. I always say that the universe takes care of you. I believe that. Now I’ll get to see if it’s true.

It's kinda doubly weird for me. Because I've seen through things to the degree that I understand clearly that the universe isn't what most people say it is and does not operate in at all the way most people think it does. Yet the power of what most people think is very strong. You should never underestimate it. (This is one of about a million things wrong with the whole "let's get an Enlightenment Experience right this minute" mindset, by the way. But that's a whole 'nother article. Maybe a book.)

Join me on these pages in the following months and together we can all see how it goes…

I'm going to Finland! August 24 - 30, 2009 I'll be doing a bunch of talks and zazen things in Finland. I'll be in Jyväskylä and Helsinki and probably a few other places. I don't have specific dates yet. But I'll post them when I get them. If you're on Facebook, they've set up a group about the trip. So go join up. Info is posted in Finnish and English.

I know there are readers in other parts of Europe who've asked me to come out to speak in your countries. Now's your chance. Since I'll be in Europe anyhow, I can arrange to make it to other places while I'm over there.

The only possible conflicting dates around that time as of this writing are

August 6 - 15 Great Sky Sesshin, Eitzen, Minnesota
September 19 - 22 (tentative) Dogen Sangha Retreat, Shizuoka, Japan

If you have any ideas of arranging stuff that doesn't bump into those dates, please send me an e-mail at spoozilla@gmail.com.

Please bear in mind I am a one-man show. I have no staff to set these kinds of things up and I am terrible beyond any definition of terrible you can possibly come up with at organization and scheduling. So if you want to do this, you'll need to set things up. Also keep in mind that I am not independently wealthy. So you'll need to figure out how to finance the thing. But I will take any serious plan seriously.

And for those of you in the USA, I'll be doing a book tour this year and am on the look-out for places to come and speak. Here are the dates so far.

Bodhi Tree Bookstore - Los Angeles, CA - Thursday March 12, 2009

Favors.Org - Event - Bay Area, CA (location TBD) - Thursday March 19, 2009
SF Zen Center - Event - San Francisco, Friday March 20, 2009
Green Apple Books - San Francisco, CA - Author Event - Saturday March 21, 2009 - 4 pm
Copperfield's Books - Petaluma, CA - Author Event - Sunday March 22, 2009 - 1:30 pm

Interdependence Project - New York, NY - Wednesday March 25, 2009

Southern Dharma Retreat Center - Asheville, North Carolina - April 2 - 5, 2009

Same deal goes for gigs in the US as in Europe.

I promise I won't monopolize the blog with tour dates. But for now it's the only place I have to announce these things. I'm gonna be working on that as well.

For now I've added a link with all the dates on it over there to your left.

It's minus 2 degrees here in Dallas and I'm having a great time!!

I'm staying with Mike's brother Daniel this time round and thank god for heaters! USA is great**, but I'm missing Singapore already!!

Here are the things I take for granted in Singapore. Count yourself blessed if you are sitting in your Singapore home right now!!


1) You don't sit on a toilet seat and jump up in horror, screaming "Sweet Mother of God!"... Because it is freezing cold.

2) You can order a steaming hot plate of kang kong almost anywhere. I crave for it so much, I'd maim a child now for it. I told Shuyin this and she sent me an email with a bigass picture of a plate of kangkong. Nabeh.

3) No need to spend 20 minutes moisturizing everything from your face to your legs to your nipples after showering everyday.

4) I miss my hammies so much... :( I know this is not really relevant to Singapore but I'm just saying.


I went to this bar/restaurant called Twin Peaks with Mike and his friends the other day. It's like Hooters but even less subtle.

So anyway, the waitresses there are wearing these weeny checked red shirts that's midriff-bearing and tied in between their boobies! And really short skirts and boots.





Everywhere I turn to, tits are overflowing! And these are not tits that belong to some fat old lady, mind you. The girls are fucking hot!

This seems to be a trend prevalent in America - the hot chicks are all waitresses of some sort!

I understand that hot chicks get more tips and so most of them naturally would be in the service industry, but why???

I don't like it!

When I go to a restaurant with some guy on a date, I don't want my server to be hotter than me and shoving her tits into my date's face, right??

Megan Fox used to be a waitress.

Can you IMAGINE being served by her?? And your boyfriend looks at you and thinks... "Why my girlfriend's tits so small/eyes not as mesmerizing/does not have flowing bronze hair/look like a goddess/etc?"

Maybe I am just being insecure.


But anyway, I also don't get why pretty girls will get more tips than ugly ones. I mean, men would tip them more, surely, but people like me will definitely tip them less.


Me, served by ugly waitress: "Oh go get rhinoplasty... Here, have 20%."

Me, served by pretty waitress: "Get your fucking tits out of my face! And fuck you for having nice legs too! Here's 5% for you. Life ain't so lucky for you now, is it??!?"


Shouldn't this sorta equalise the whole system, or are American girls really so self-assured and confident that they don't care?



**In the South people are are ultra nice, shopping is awesome, and 900 TV channels (plus two porn channels) to choose from.

I got a new Suicide Girls article up right now. Go look.

According to the press the Dalai Lama said sex invariably spells trouble. Actually what he said (in part) was, "Sexual pleasure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication. Too much attachment towards your children, towards your partner (is) one of the obstacle or hindrance of peace of mind." He also said celibacy was good. This made the news. So I wrote about that.

See ya!

Good News: In the Devil's Territory is for sale, half-off, at the Dzanc website.

Despite promising prompt mini-tour and blog tour recaps, I have posted nothing for a month. You might think this means I am lazy, but I would like to point out that I recently completed a fifty-page story comprised entirely of letters sent from Haiti to Florida and Virginia in the 1980's. You might think that this sounds boring, but I would like to point out that the letters bring news of (1) an illicit relationship between a 41-year-old missionary and the 18-year-old visitor who becomes his bride; (2) the fall of the Baby Doc regime; (3) instructions for raising razor wire above the walls of your gated compound; and (4) a bullet in an envelope.

Mini-tour recap: (1) Gosh, it was fun. In Kentucky, I got to kick it (picture here, from the Lexington Herald-Leader) with Jim Tomlinson, author of Things Kept, Things Left Behind, and Chekhov's true heir! High school students drove from faraway Cynthiana with their school librarian to hear us read! The Jessamine County library director took me on a tour of Centre College, and, in the Cracker Barrel, showed me the uniforms worn by their football team the evening they beat Harvard! (2) In North Carolina, I watched Barack Obama win the election on the hotel television! I watched Oprah Winfrey make a handkerchief of a stranger! I watched John McCain give a gracious concession speech! I visited the yellow-leafed campus of Wake Forest University! I read with Denzil Strickland, author of Swimmers in the Sea! The Winston-Salem Borders sold out of In the Devil's Territory! I partied late into the night with Sheryl Monks and Kevin Morgan Watson of Press53! At midnight, we ate Krispy Kremes!

Blog Tour Recap:

1. Sarah Weinman asked me to weigh in on the relationship between literature and crime fiction for her Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind blog, and much debate followed in the comments section, and on other blogs.

2. At Largehearted Boy, I gushed about David Bazan and Pedro the Lion.

3. At Laura Benedict's Notes from the Handbasket, I posted about ten books I'd like my children to read before they're grown.

4. Syntax of Things asked me to type a little about "The San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl Party," recently named one of the 100 Distinguished Sports Stories of 2007 by the editors of Best American Sports Writing 2008.

More Recent Notices in Newspapers, Magazines, and Blogs:

1. This review of Best American Mystery Stories in the London Metro suggests my story "A Day Meant to Do Less" is up to "tricks," while mystery blog The Little Professor prefers to say it has an "interesting narrative structure."

2. The Palm Beach Post, my hometown newspaper, said "A Love Story" was a "typically strange vignette from the mean streets of Palm Beach County," and "A Day Meant to Do Less" was "a stunning story."

3. Toledo Blade quotes me as saying: "The darkest things define us," which I'm pretty sure is a misparaphrase of a quote from a William Gay story I didn't quite succeed in properly remembering.

4. Lit blogger Katrina Denza writes: "I read a lot of short story collections and once in a while I come across one that does more than dazzle on the technical level, does more than introduce me to foreign lands, does more than show me a different side of humanity. Once in a while I come across a collection, such as this one, Kyle Minor’s “In the Devil’s Territory,” that does all those things and at the same time, reaches in and holds my heart all the way through, sometimes giving it a pinch or a jab, and other times stretching it, stretching, until I fear the very flesh of it might rip, then massaging it gently back to …to…well to a state of calm, but most definitely changed."

5. Jason Skipper at Third Coast Magazine writes: "Throughout this striking collection, we are reminded that everyone harbors a secret life, in one way or another. The stories live beyond the page, make you look around, in classrooms and grocery stores and churches, in living rooms and across kitchen tables. They make you wonder what people need to confess but cannot—and if they did, could we bear to
hear it?"

The current issue of Maximum Rocknroll (#308, January 2009), one of the longest running and coolest punk rock magazines has an interview with me on the subject of my movie Cleveland's Screaming!. So go out and get a copy today. It's just four bucks and the rest of the magazine is pretty groovy. Look for "Cleveland's Screaming" right on the front cover!

Also, I will be at the ALTBOOK BAZAAR at the Wax Poetic Gallery at 3208 West Magnolia Blvd. in Burbank, California this Saturday December 13th, 2008 from 6-9 PM. They'll have free food and free drinks and you can meet a whole slew of local authors including my fellow Suicide Girls columnist Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna (aka Miss Truth Hurts). So come on down! No zazen required.

But if you want some zazen first, we'll be having the usual zazen at Hill Street Center that day. See the link over there on your left for details.

I'm writing my latest Suicide Girls column, which will go live on Monday morning. So I gotta run off and do that.

I hope to see a few of you at the ALTBOOK BAZAAR, though.

Bye!

ADDENDUM 12/11/08

Do I have any readers in Portland? If so, please write me at spoozilla@gmail.com and put "Portland" somewhere in the subject line.

Sorry for neglecting this blog for so many days! And I'm gonna be neglecting it for even more days coz I'm flying off to USA...

Weds (today) at 10pm! You are welcome to stalk me at the airport - I'm the one with the patent baby pink chioest ever luggage. MUAHAHAHA!!

Excitedness!

Well, I'll be bringing my laptop and updating whenever Mike bothers to figure out how to connect to the wireless network at his brother's house where we will be staying in.

I'm gonna stuff my face with Chicken Express (it's like KFC but less salty and damn juicy!!) and Sonic's cheese tots once I get there! And a corn dog. Like seriously, why isn't that sold here?


I'll be back in SIN on 1st Jan 2009. Woe is me, celebrating multiple new years (time zone) in an airplane!

Last year the same thing happened and I thought that people would whoop in the airplane or have a nice countdown - you know, plane gives out free champagne to everyone... Confetti in air... People hi-fiving each other... Giving out hugs... Is that too much to ask for??

Nope.

Nothing of that sort.

All I got were mopey passengers and stewardesses who delibrately take a long time to get me my water... all coz they were unlucky enough to have to work on New Year's eve and day.

Well fuck you all, fucky people!

Fuck you all is totally my new in phrase. I've been using it a lot on Mike and it really irritates him. When he says the same thing to me I start crying and acting like he is very abusive and I'm really hurt.


Mike: "Baby... Can you wash the bedsheets today?"

Me: "FUCK YOU ALL!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Mike: "What?? Well, fuck you!"

Me: "Fuck you right back!"

Mike: "....."

Me: -begins to cry-








Ever heard that chugging 2 bottles of sprite and eating bananas will definitely make you puke? Me neither! But Paul and Kaykay have to test out this urban legend!

Today is December 8th, notable to me for three reasons. 1) It's traditionally celebrated as the day Buddha attained Enlightenment, 2) it's the day John Lennon died and 3) it's the day the Japanese think of as Pearl Harbor Day (because of the international dateline, the attack occurred on the 8th in Japanese time, not the 7th).

Unfortunately, instead of a happy post commemorating Buddha's Enlightenment Day -- and the final day of Rohatsu Sesshins all over the world, I have to post some important (to me) obituaries. I put a longer and more complete version of these up on Suicide Girls. But I want to mention them on this page too.

On December 4th Forrest J. Ackerman, founder and first publisher of the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland passed away in his home in Horrorwood, Karloffornia. He was 92.

The following day, December 5th, the world lost Beverly Garland, the one person who stood up to the horrifying Venusian walking cucumber in Roger Corman's cult classic It Conquered the World -- and in a tight sweater (hubba-hubba), no less!

These two have been covered in a number of other news sources and I have complete obits for them up on Suicide Girls. Here I want to talk about another recent death.

On November 30th, Koichi Takano passed away in his home in Tokyo, Japan. Although Takano's name isn't nearly as well-known as either Ackerman's or Garland's, to me his loss is much more personal. He used to be my boss. Takano was a special effects director who was initially hired in the 1950's by Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects director of the classic Godzilla films. After Takano had worked in the background on a number of Godzilla pictures, Tsuburaya hand-picked him to direct the effects for his groundbreaking television series Ultraman. Takano continued to direct special effects for hundreds of science fiction and superhero television shows and theatrical films until complications from emphysema forced him to retire five years ago. Takano continued to appear in lots of documentaries and making-of TV shows and specials to talk about his legendary effects work. Some dopes in this country have derided his work as cheezy -- his preferred method for depicting a city-smashing monster was to put a stuntman into a fat rubber dinosaur costume and have him stomp on a miniature replica of Tokyo. But just try finding example of special effects work done in the US on a similar budget and time frame that is anywhere near as meticulous, detailed and just plain cool as what Takano accomplished!


The photo on the top of this entry is one I took of Koichi Takano along with actress Mariya Yamada at the wrap party for the TV series Ultraman Dyna at the Akasaka Prince Hotel on August 11, 1998. Mariya played Agent Mai of the Super GUTS team, the people who would try every week to destroy whatever monster attacked Tokyo and fail misreably until Ultraman Dyna came along and helped them out. Takano was the special effects supervisor on the series.

I have another photo of me and Takano on a bench at some hotel waiting for a bus. It was on a company trip. We'd both been up really late the night before and Takano had been drinking too (I hadn't). In the photo I'm the one who looks hung over and he's all bright and chipper and ready to go. Alas, I cannot find that picture.

All three of these legends will be missed.