Urge to read childhood favourites again

It's strange how much power a book you read in your early teens can have over you. Again, if you read a much cited rites of passage tome a little too late you can find it a pile of toss while others remember it vividly as a life changing moment.

I read The Catcher in the Rye when I was about 22 and thought that the irritating and "phony" Holden Caulfield deserved a good slap and will roll my eyes and curl up the right side of my mouth at anyone who reveres it. Jill, by Philip Larkin and written five years earlier does a much better job with an equally silly protagonist.

I was introduced to The Family from One End Street when I was about eleven by Mrs Millican who had a voice like a stoned Thatcher, a huge gap in her front teeth and walnut whip mane of dark blonde bun. The only clear memory I have is of the mother hiding from the milk man or the gas man and the curtains being drawn and the kids ordered to keep quiet. I was reminded of that episode recently when I recalled hiding below the windows with my mum from the insurance man and possibly the meter reader as well. Of course, my mum figured that of the curtains were closed it was obvious that you were in, hence my daring not to breathe as we got as flat to the floor and as close to the wall as we could.

I had to wait ages aged 14 for my reservation of Autumn Term by Antonia Forest and Fifteen by Beverly Clearly. Everyone in my year was desperate to read them, especially the latter as it was about boys and sex (or so I was led to believe!)

A few years ago I realised that revisiting the past is a bad idea: the place is no longer as pretty, the sex is dull, the company mind-numbing, the leading man an 80's muscle-bound moustachioed lump, so I'm not sure whether reading them again will awaken longings to climb on to my bunk-bed and kiss my poster of Bruce Willis or whether I'll sling them aside and wish I'd not disturbed the memory.

Spell-tastic

I have problems with anal retention (but more about my constipation at another time, arf arf!). Anyway, much as I find nit-pickers and obsessives irritating, I just love the fact that someone has made a website due to their annoyance over people misspelling the word definitely!

http://www.d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com/

Lack of manual instruction melt-down

Every corporate company in Japan comes with a manual of detailed instruction on how to act in given situations. Problems occur when the lack of authoritative direction requires the use of something which often goes amiss in Japan: common sense, together with the confidence to speak/act for yourself. This, coupled with the fear of making a mistake, leads to all kinds of silliness.

Take the following situation: you walk into a convenience store with your own (clearly visible) plastic bag and present the clerk with two beers. Faster than a hyena stripping a thigh bone, the index finger had already been moistened in the sponge and is rabidly detaching another plastic bag for your transportation pleasure.

You announce "I've already got a bag" as mild panic passes over the face of Super Clerk as he/she, (but men are more prone in my experience), desperately tries to remember any directives dealing specifically with foreigners carrying plastic bags. Unable to recall situation 10,046-b with any clarity SC simply ignores you and snatching up the bag, proceeds to bring it level with goods. Knowing that you have approximately 0.25 seconds before goods are packed, handles twisted together and another wasteful bag is about to be guiltily dragged home, mild panic enters your voice as you say "I don't need a bag!"

This announcement merely causes SC to complete the act in a record 0.15 seconds and triggers annoyance in your voice as you say "I don't need another bag! I have one here!" (Whilst thinking "Do you think I just happened to enter the store with a large empty plastic bag for my own amusement? Perhaps you think I collect them? Well, as a matter of fact I do, as you keep bloody well giving them to me!")

SC then rapidly (not rabidly this time) takes the beer out of the bag it has just been deposited in, adds a sticker (to prove that you paid for the item as the bag the beer has been put in is not from that store) and repacks and twists the handles and
you are on your way.

You are not yet on your way, however, if you have purchased salad, a drink or a tub of ice-cream: "I don't need disposable chopsticks, a straw and a plastic spoon....I live 50 metres away!" Too slow. You then get home to discover that you have also been given a plastic fork as directive 808,456-d mentions that foreigners often have difficulty using chopsticks.

Groan (in a good way!)

He is such an unrivalled vessel of manhood, an unmitigated generator of longing and initiator of tongue lolling that I could almost regain my late twenties sex drive (wouldn't that be scary...) Plus, he is also proof that you shouldn't dismiss the school nerd.

Karma

This photo makes me very happy. I love comeuppance.
I've had the delight of hearing how various nemeses got theirs over the last few years. Cue evil grin and hopes that I've not disturbed the cosmic boomerang by delighting in their (deserved) fates!

Oh Theodore!

Yes siree Wentworth Miller sure is eye candy, but I remain to be convinced of his acting skills (he is supposed to be playing a character who is supremely intelligent and devoid of certain emotions, but, as I've not seen him in anything else I'm not sure whether he is a decent actor or a little wooden!)

Robert Knepper on the other hand is a genius!

I'm about 2/3 of the way through season 2 of Prison Break (or series 2 as would be normal in English as opposed to Yanklish) and poor old T-Bag has lost his hand for the second time! It is getting more preposterous by the episode, but I love it and him! At the moment I'm waiting to see whether Fernando's light aircraft will be shot down by the FBI (they had so better not kill Sucre as he is such a sweetie and they've already killed Veronica and Tweener.....grrrr.)

Of course, under normal circumstances T-bag would have bled out in the barn when Abruzzi first chopped off his hand, but, miraculously, he managed to get it reattached by a vet (you can see where I am going with the preposterousness idea!) Of course, under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have developed a strong attachment to a paedophilic, rapist and murderer! I've witnessed him rape a young man who subsequently committed suicide, I've seen him murder one of the prison guards during the riot when the other prisoners wanted to let him go and then scare the next young rape victim into setting up his "friend" for the crime, we've been told that he killed and did "horrible things" to five teenage student nurses, he killed the vet who reattached his hand and has just killed Geary and managed to set up Bellick for the crime! Does he deserve to rot in hell? No way, he rocks!

And it isn't just me. A 13 year old Japanese student told me she likes him. Now, 13 year old Japanese girls like Disney, the colour pink and Daniel Radcliffe so if she also wants a heinous escaped criminal to evade capture, I don't feel too messed up in the head!

Why is he so popular? Why can I forget/over-look his crimes even though I could never forgive them? He is smart, has a great choice of vocabulary at his disposal that often makes he laugh out loud, he is cutting, witty and does that trade-mark tongue curl just before he is about to do/say something foul. I can't like a sadist because he is intelligent and amusing surely?

I think the writers/the actor first allowed us to warm to T-bag during the riot when Bellick announced that he was the resulting offspring of his father's rape of his retarded sister and the expression that crossed his face at the time. In the next episode he killed the young prison guard but I found myself saying "Oh...T-bag!" rather than feeling any disgust. We also saw his distress when he found out that Abruzzi had organised the killing of his brother and nephew as revenge against T-bag's attempted blackmailing of him. We are constantly reminded by other characters of his despicableness but I've started thinking "Oh, leave him alone!" I was laughing along with him when he managed to trick the others and get all the "loot" for himself.

Knowing that his DNA was "flawed" from the beginning lends him a certain sympathy but I think he comes across as a life with so much potential that just took the wrong path. And he probably didn't have much choice at the crossroads.

Good Luck Teddy! Here's hoping that you make it to season 3!

Update: Gyaah! He's just killed two more people but I'm still rooting for him. I'm surmising that he'll wind up back in Fox River with Bellick.

Yeah I like procrastinating....and what of it?!

On being asked whether having a baby had hampered his song writing, Mr Jarvis Cocker replied 'No, not at all. It was probably the other way round. If you've got limited time, it makes you use it more effectively - you're more focused. If you've got all the time in the world, you tend to sit around thinking, "Oh, I'll just sharpen some pencils."'

The electric ones of course. I can't be doing with the manual variety. It's that brief moment of capturing the perfect point before going too far and snapping the end off. I find that standing leads to the most successful tapered ends. Trouble is, I really like sharpening pencils. Second only to laminating as a pleasing office-based chore.

Why all this waffle, there was supposed to be a video here, but it didn`t work out!
Think it was three years ago, in Koh Mak, Thailand. The general idea seemed to be that I would appologize for lack of email content via video, what a marvel of technology my absent friends would deem me to be; how they would forget my lack of keyboard hammering whilst enjoying the peaceful surrounds of the bay; what slight frowns would appear between their eyes at the metamorphosis of my accent.......
Oh well, another time, perhaps.

Vino and vindaloo my arse!

Beer and curry. Curry and beer. A few beers and "How about going for a curry?" Far too many portions of curry and expensive poppadoms that you are too stuffed to bother with, but room enough for another trip back to the pub to trough back a few more beers.

Beer and wine? Er...no.

There's not a lot I can even think of to say. Visions of accountants annunciating "You dollop up the dopiaza, Francis and I'll top up the tipple. Mmmmm this Pink Elephant isn't bad eh?" Apart from I'm the one who is supposed to be "Mmmmmming" because Pink Elephant (a Portuguese rosé.....gah!) is "stylistically designed and targeted at women who eat curry".

But it's called "Pink Elephant" and it's BEER and curry not wine and curry.

They should've asked me. I'd have saved them the £1,000,000 pounds that they are destined to waste on trying to flog this anomaly to an aghast market.

Final cringe must be saved for the company's name. It's so bad that I can hardly say it. It's so bad that it is not even remotely funny and I should currently be stitching up my sides....Balti Wines!

That's like the Spaghetti Beer company telling you to drink Turin Shroud real ale with your lasagne.

http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/drink/story/0,,2100062,00.html

Update: I knew it! I just knew it! Googling "curry and beer" images brings you brave oaths of "to eat curry, drink beer" desperate pleas of "give me curry and beer for dinner" an enthusiastic "dribbling curry and beer on it" and the above hilarious jape, whereas, "curry and wine" brings about a recipe for "Red wine chicken curry" (wtf?) some ponce pontificating "As to the wine, I have chosen a Luigi" a not very enticing "quiet evening of wine and curry" a "wine expert" who has the audacity to go by the name of Julian Curry and some baldy recommending sparkling reds with "Indian cuisine!"

Getting sick of foreign men in Japan

Not because the majority of them fall into anime freak, Alpha male monster, social misfit crank or all-round gimpoid, but because they all seem to be stalking me.

The problem stems from the cliched foreign man held view that foreign women in Japan are fat, hairy, bitchy, undesirable, viciously sex-deprived unfeminine objects of ridicule that dare to hold an opinion and don't shave their faces.

Should one cross their path who is none of the above (apart from the opinioned part, naturellement!) They start frothing at the gills and groin and any hitherto held semblance of normal social intercourse goes out of the window.

Part of it it the problem with the choice of friends you have as an expat. Ironically, my current two chief stalkers have even mentioned themselves that they wonder if they would hang out with some of the people they do here if they were "back home." You have a relatively small pool of foreigners to choose from and the chance of really hitting it off with someone is quite slim, so you make do. Problems begin when the person you are making do with seems to view you more highly or doesn't have the self esteem to care that you really don't give two figs about them.

Tapping into my vast reserves of originality, I will term the first stalker Mr A and name the second Mr B!

A-san is a new case. I met him a few times through the one person here I really like hanging out with (Scott, who is leaving in September). He keeps inviting me to this really lame English-style pub with a scary regularity. It's partly the predictability, but also the fact that the pub has a tin of Heinz beans behind the bar and a Sooty puppet hanging from the menu (fish and chips, welsh rarebit...groan) is more than off-putting. A sent me 20 mails in one night last week. A asked me what my weekend plans were yesterday and I didn't reply to the mail. A then re-asked me today. A has mentioned that maybe I'd like to go to his in-laws place in Nara one weekend (huh?!) A keeps hugging and kissing me on departure and this is made even grosser because he smells of sour milk.

B-san has plenty of problems to overcome as a recovering alcoholic. He has spent the past eight months dry, which is really commendable. Trouble is, I have spent the past six years having him on the phone for over an hour at a time, having him phone me from his home country when he returns home, trying to convince him not to climb out of a train window, having him start sobbing in restaurants, being made privvy to information that makes it pretty difficult to even want know him let alone spend time with him, watching him (along with the rest of the room) knock back two beers and one huge jug of soju as the waitress tried to close the bar, draw attention to us with his great booming voice and being the word's biggest tight arse.

However, I like B! I'd like to spent one evening with B about every two months: he's funny, considerate, interested in a range of topics and can be very pleasant company. B, however, wants to meet me every week or so. As B has no self-respect, I can draw on a range of ever more silly excuses to get out of meeting him. I never 'phone or mail B, but like clock work, he is ringing up asking if I want to meet from lunch on Saturday almost every week. again the predictability of it annoys me the most. I'm shouting at his emails (as I never answer the 'phone if his name appears) "Fer Gawd's sake think of something else!"