Bad Shower

(picture from actual incident)

Had a nasty shower this morning. Spent a long time cleaning my mouth while most of the precious water wasted away on the wall. I lathered my whole body up with some Ivory soap and was about to step back under the shower head. I took one step towards the hot stream and it stopped. The water pressure completely stopped! No hot no cold. And there I was like a shampooed dog with no way to rinse. Troy and Fran laughed at me through the door. I don’'t blame them though, I woulda laughed too. I just didn’'t like the way Troy’'s laugh sounded so mean. Well no, that'’s not true, I like that Troy’'s mean; it makes me laugh. Eventually they got around to bringing the landlord up while I waited in the bathroom squeegeeing what I could from my spider legs. “"Yeah, it shouldn’t be too long"” Troy said. “"Ok, like, '‘too long'’ as in a few minutes or-"” before I could finish Troy butted in, “"No, ‘'too long'’ as in a couple of days, heh-heh-heh”." And he meant it. I looked to the water reservoir in the back of the can as my only saving grace and was just about to dip my hands into it when Troy knocked on the door and slipped me some water from a pot that was on the stove. I took a dirty green floor towel (supplied by the Devil), Troy'’s regular towel, and proceeded to dunk it in the pot and slap it over my body, thus ridding myself of the soapy coat. I went to my room and dried off proper-like with a normal towel and stepped back into the living room. I was just about to tell Troy and Fran how much that whole ordeal stank but was interrupted by an animated Fran informing us that the water was now back on-full power. Back on, full power, no reason. My luck.

Bad Rash

(not my arm but someone's arm and I bet it's itchy-- my arm is more spotty like measles, but the over -the-counter hydrocortisone ointment is helping a bit)

Been scratchin’ my arms. The rash is moving. Hives or some such thing. Bad on the elbow. Stretching out uppa my arm-- the right one. Stress can do some nasty things to my mongrel skin. My skin is bad acne-wise at the best of times, but this new strain, the stress related twist, it really bothers me. It’'s not bothersome in an unsightly way as much as it is a nuisance. It'’s a nuisance in two ways, the first being a severe itch and the second one, the more insidious way is that it acts as a visual reminder of how stressed out I actually am, which in turn stresses me out even more.

Grizzle

Even though Grizzle was once bought specifically for me, well, I haven't lived with him for a while so I suppose he's one of two family dogs.

I love Grizzle. He's part-Chow and part-Husky, which makes him a mutt. He was free. Most mutts are but fops and yuppies like to spend money on puppies just to say they spent the money. He's 91 or 98 years old. Recently my mom put him on some anti-inflammatories to combat his arthritis and he's been jumping the fence(something he hasn't been mobile enough to do for years) again. I'm happy that he can still roam around eating garbage and pissing over other's piss. Bruin is his son, well, adopted son and he's a fine dog as well.

No target. Still shootin'.

A something snapped in my efferent neck sunaptein.
My heady, blood-lubbin’ sparks,
Up-in the marked vein on the jugular left,
Hurtme a half-hand down my vertical throat.
This current that charged then charged!
The isolated, instant “ow!”
Nervous potential-passed;
Realized without my permission. Not okay.
Not yes-painful
But irksome, zee-literal, potent jerk.

---

this poem's about this weird little shock that went through my neck; it felt like a rubber band snapping... it was very electrical. Why do they happen? 'they' being the misfirings...

Confusious Templey 

looking West from patio 

The Bars

I went to a bar called Carnegie’s--funny stuff! There were tons of people dancing on the bar and you had to order drinks through their legs--expensive drinks too, so Trox and I drank most of our beer from the 7-11 around the corner. Early on I did order a rye and coke and it came to about $9 canadian, fuck, I had to pay for it cuz he already poured it. But yeah back to the entertainment the patrons/dancers were the best. They were so bad-- they were dancing so fast and you could tell they thought they were really good. Wow, that last sentence sounds like it came from a grade 3 kid, fuck I dunno, something you can't put into words and well, the dancing for the most part was beyond words... Umm, this one chick kept doing really bad “Flash Dance”moves, running on the spot and bending forward really fast then back upright. Comedy. Too much effort to describe but I giggled and all.

Later in the week Trox and I went to a bar called “B1”. We were the only white people in the whole place. The deal is that for 500NT (bout’$20 CND) you can drink all night, all you can drink. There were people puking in the washroom every single time I went to the can. Three time people puked beside our table. The weirdest part is we were treated like royalty(besides the pukin near us), I’d go into the can and standing at the back of the line and the dudes would part, openening the lines and signal for me to go the front of the line, I said “no, I’ll wait” really slowly but they insisted. Then a group of gay Asians (4 guys) came over and asked us to dance. On a side note, before they came over I pointed them out as gay; it’s good to know my ‘gaydar’ works cross-culturally. Half-way through the night there were some “gansta” looking Asians and they were sort of scary because I couldn’t really tell if they were mocking us or what the hell. One of them came up and said loud and deliberate, “HAY MANN WATZ AP?” then he shook our hands “G-style”(but not very good G-style) and since he did, the whole lot of them came over and started to. I still don’t know if it was mockingly though; Fran says probably not, but fuck it was weird. Oh and the best part was the music; they played really really bad and outdated American music and were loving it. JiveBunny?!--heee! Later one the DJ played M.C. Hammer’s hit “2 legit 2 quit” not once but twice and the little people were freaking out-- even singing along,“kick-butt, kick-butt, kick, butt, kick-butt, kick-butt, kick-butt” I felt pretty intimidated at times; being one of 2 Whities in a place of about 300 people.

Troy makin' Chinese face...he's good. 

Saluting the Sun in my eyes at Martyr Centre... 

Troy- Reflective Ball Reflection  

Troy-Reflective Ball Reflection 1 

Spider in can

Heteropoda venatoria (Linnaeus)

big assed spider in shower/washroom...about 4 or 5 inches I think, I have yet to stretch him out. Troy is scared like a little asshole. He wants to kill it but I say "no". Shitty in a lil scarier now. I hope he chews up Troy's little asshole.

Oct.20.2004

I’m in Taipei. The first thing I did when I arrived was grab a beer with Troy; we picked it up from one of the countless 7-11’s. The produce markets were just starting up, setting up their terrible meats.

The smell in Taipei is mostly hideous. Three outta four corners have food vendors that sell really greasy undercooked meat treats. They have little fans with ribbons tied to the flaps that rotate slowly above the meaty slabs to keep away the flies. The smell from corner to corner, moment to moment is a warm conglomerate of cat piss/tofu/rooster shit/blood/ and salt custard. I like it here but the smell must go. I bought a Glade scented outlet plug deal for my room and fell asleep with it on, all the windows closed---I woke up in the middle of the night coughing, with choking double lung because of the vaporous faux lemon haze. But still, I’d prefer mustard-gas (if only for the fact that I could rub my own piss via rag all over my face--ask any WWI vet) to the alley-way multi-stench

My always greasy face is even slicker on account of the humidity. Believe it.

A blue sky is rare so far while the smog-grey clouds prevail.

I’m having a hard time with Mandarin--some of the sounds so far—see, I came here and I thought, “What? there is absolutely no linguistic sound on Earth that I can’t duplicate.” Me so very wrong. Just as Asians have a problem with “R” and “L” there are tons of sounds here that I simply cannot duplicate, many words have a strange windy (kwah) sound at the begging or the always subtle (jsh) sound, fuck there are countless others. Anyway, I’m still practising but things are pretty difficult so far.

My eyes, they sting.

North West vantage-point (form the roof patio) Rainy day. 

Looking North from our Sun-roof Patio deal 

Taipei-rjb 

Here in Taipei they have crazy "mini-discos" and Troy and Fran were disco-ing. Untrue. 

The bathrooms in Taipei are too small for Whitey. 

This is the blue door that leads to the stairwell that leads to the exit that leads to the smell of rotten meat.