My Encounter with the Disgusting Fish Eating Guy in the Supermarket

Bulk fish.

Just let that word combination sink into your brain for a second. Everybody can probably picture the bulk candy section at their grocery store, those enormous barrels of gummy worms and jelly beans that would probably require a decade of scooping to ever become empty. Seriously, North Korea is starving, and meanwhile A & P has two tons of gummy worms just sitting around. I say we air drop them on the Koreans; how in the world would Kim Jong Eun be able to repress democracy when three thousand pounds of Mike and Ikes are falling from the sky? Yes, the embattled North Korean proletariat is sure to embark on a bloody uprising, as soon as they get their first taste of freedom, in the glorious nectar of a pink Starburst.

But I digress. Bulk candy, got it? Now imagine that instead of candy, it’s fish. Lots and lots of fish. Raw fish. Squids. Eels. Octopi. Half the cast of Finding Nemo. All of them in barrels, sitting out in the warm air of a place called Wu Mart, the florescent lights illuminating them, bathing their moist bodies in a yellow glow reminiscent of the color of a box of Gordon’s Fish Sticks. The seafood just lies there in Wu Mart, unguarded, the same way produce is generally displayed. People walk by and take some, dropping them into bags, then continuing on with their shopping, the fish thrown down at the bottom of their carts, looking alive, as though they could start flopping around any moment, whapping up against a box of Corn Flakes or a tube of Pringles.

This scene was where my path crossed with a gentleman I can only refer to as The Disgusting Fish Eating Guy. It was on a Friday afternoon, and I had just been denied money by Bank of China yet again, which put me in a foul mood. That, compounded with my growing depression, caused me to wander around Wu Mart in a kind of daze, not really wanting any food but understanding that I would die if I refused it. This was a no win food situation, a Catch V-8, and so I bitterly placed a few bags of chicken nuggets into my grocery basket. And that’s when I saw. Walking through the meat section, he was there, breaking all social etiquette, clear as day.

He was an older man, maybe in his fifties. A heavy black jacket thrown over his shoulders, like he belonged in a Russian novel, he shoveled raw fish into his mouth the same way I eat French fries. His dirty fingers ripped apart a squid and then brought the flesh up to his teeth. A Wu Mart employee saw him too, and she ran over, striking his hand with a white piece of plastic. She yelled at him in Chinese but he didn’t stop. Undaunted, he kept at it, feverishly munching down squid with the determination of my ex-girlfriend at the Old Country Buffet.

“That sick fucker,” I thought. I saw no humor in what was happening. In fact, I felt enraged. Didn’t he know that this was the bulk fish section, and that he was getting his disgusting finger and mouth germs all over the same seafood that someone else would probably buy? How thoughtless of him! I mean, it’s gross enough that the meat just sits out in the open like that, to have some wayward soul molesting it…the idea was unbearable. “I’m going to punch him,” I said to myself. “Right in his fish-juice covered face. Somebody has to put an end to this.”

The poor worker woman continued trying to bat his fingers away, failing miserably. I nearly shouted at the top of my lungs – “Get your filthy hands off that fish, you bastard!” It’s difficult to say why The Disgusting Fish Eating Guy sparked such emotion in me. Maybe it was the way he disregarded the woman, totally ignored her, that made me shake with anger. I’m not sure. All I know is that I took two steps towards him, prepared to knock his ass out, and then stopped. Looked around. There was a small crowd, and my eyes went from face to face.

Laughter. Chuckling. Nobody cared. They were all amused. This was good for a chuckle, a fun break from life’s normal monotony. One younger Chinese man made eye contact with me. He must’ve noticed that my mouth hung open, my face red, no joy filling my countenance, and he smiled and pointed towards the Guy, as though my expression could only be explained by me not having yet seen the hilarity right in front of me.

All of this caused me to pause. What was happening? Why did this influence amusement in others, but rage inside me?

There’s a thin line between funny and offensive, and the Guy walked it finely. Eventually he stopped, turned away and hurried off. The woman looked relieved. The crowd dispersed. The show was over. I thought for a second. Maybe this was a moment I should remember. I thought about how I’d laughed at Christians when they’d get upset and offended, mocked old people for their steadfast emphasis on formality, or how I’d roll my eyes at people in general for making such a big deal out of things that I saw as little, feeling disrespected my slightly off-color jokes or by the wrong tone of voice. I’d always wanted the world to lighten up, but if they felt the same way that I had, watching that man shoving the squid into his mouth…well, maybe I just never understood them like I should have.

I walked over to the liquor section and bought some Baijiu. No, I told myself, I needed to relax. I’d become touchy, and that was no good. Booze in hand, I proceeded to the check out. The Disgusting Fish Eating Man was gone. The deal was no longer big, and probably never had been in the first place.

*

Bullshit in the News! (April 30th Edition)

Well folks, it’s Tuesday, which means it’s time for the second edition of Bullshit in the News – where we take a look at some of the least important stories to break in the past week. Here we go!

1. Chinese Military Officer Claims USA Biologically Engineers Bird Flu

A senior colonel in the Chinese military said on social media this week that the bird flu was created by the United States in order to attack China, and birds have been wrongly getting the blame this whole time. Colonel Dai Xu also believes the United States created and attacked China with SARS in 2003. Other diseases created by the US government but not mentioned include Mad Cow Disease (see photograph to the right) and Meme Disorder, which is when someone can only express themselves by posting memes on Facebook. When asked about the bird flu conspiracy, China’s leading bird/chicken expert, General Tso, had no comment.

Bottom Line: Clearly Bird Flu couldn’t come from the US, as sick birds are now covered under Obamacare.

(Read More:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2307170/China-bird-flu-outbreak-Officer-accuses-United-States-secret-biological-attack.html )

2. Rare Eating Disorder Causes Woman to Scarf Down Bacon in her Sleep

Lesley Cusack of the UK has a strange affliction called “nocturnal sleep-related eating disorder,” which causes her to sleep walk to her kitchen in the middle of the night and eat everything she can get her hands on. In addition to bacon and butter pudding, Cusack has also eaten paint in her sleep, making her diet slightly healthier than Honey Boo Boo’s. Cusack says that she eats roughly 2,500 calories while she’s unconscious; tragically, she’s had 3 pets and 2 children go missing during this time.

Bottom Line: The only people who should be eating in their sleep are people in comas.

(Read More:http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/04/23/rare-sleep-disorder-has-woman-eating-2500-calories-night/ )

Airline To Dress Stewardesses Up As Sexy Maids

Asia’s Spring Airline caused controversy this week by announcing it will have its flight attendants dress as maids and butlers. The airline expects ticket sales and instances of in-flight masturbation to sky rocket. Detractors say that the maid outfits will further objectify flight attendants; supporters of the idea point out that porn stars have been wearing maid outfits since the 1970s, and nobody is objectifying them.

Bottom Line: Newsflash for passengers of Spring Airline – what you just did in the airplane toilet by yourself does NOT mean you’re in the mile high club.

(Read More: http://www.perthnow.com.au/travel/travel-news/spring-airlines-criticised-over-hostie-maids/story-fnho5w8j-1226632329748)

Man with Tourette Syndrome Shouts “Bomb” In Airport

Chalk it up to bad timing: A mere week after the horrific events in Boston, a man named Michael Doyle was not allowed to board his flight after he shouted the word “bomb” over 100 times in Washington’s Reagan airport. Turns out that Doyle has Tourette Syndrome and couldn’t control what he was saying. Learning this information led to an apology from the airline, but disqualified Doyle from winning the “Worst Terrorist of the Year” prize at this year’s Al-Qaeda Awards. After leaving the airport rejected, Doyle was then hired to anchor a newscast, where he uncontrollably blurted out “fucking shit,” and later attended the Cannes Film Festival, where he infuriated everyone by shouting out the endings to all 200 movies being screened.

Bottom Line: Nothing against people with Tourette Syndrome, but I have more respect for those who shout out socially inappropriate things by choice.

(Read more: http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/man-tourettes-syndrome-banned-flight-saying-bomb-132817473.html?vp=1)

That’s all for now. Stay tuned later this week for a few quick posts – one about a disturbing scene in the seafood section of the grocery store, and the other about true love. Until then, adios amigos! : )

*

And In Your Bank, I Deposit My Sanity

Sometimes I think about how much simpler life was when I was a kid. There were so many things back then that I didn’t have to worry about. Paying taxes, watching the height of my cholesterol rise, getting hair on my nipples, impotence, and, most importantly, having to remember a million passwords. When you’re a kid, a password is just some random noun that you have to mutter to get your friend to let you in his tree house.

“You want in? What’s the secret password?”

“Bagel sandwich.”

Bam. You’re in. That’s all it took. But then I got older, and passwords got increasingly more complicated. I started needing passwords for just about everything. My email, my WordPress account, online banking, my ATM card, the electronic lock on my door, stopping Gort from destroying the earth. Everything. And not only were passwords becoming more prevalent, they were getting more involved as well. A simple noun or a sequence numbers didn’t cut it anymore. Nope, for my own protection, passwords must include capital letters, numbers, and at least 8 characters, so that hacking into my Facebook page has become as difficult as cracking the Da Vinci Code or getting a girl’s phone number (for me anyways). In the future, one can only guess that passwords will get even more complex, requiring everything from punctuation to emoticons to strange symbols.

“You want in? What’s the secret password?”

“Oh. It’s Bill/198228/!?!/ ; ) /The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

All of this is to preface how I recently lost my mind in the bank, and all because I forgot a stupid password. I’d been living in Beijing for about a month when it happened. After getting my first paycheck from my new job, I ran off to the ATM to cash in, thrilled, ready to pull money out and do something awesome with it, like go to McDonald’s or buy a mop. I switched the ATM from Chinese to English and followed the instructions, not realizing that soon the horrors of modern security would entrap me, like a fat man who puts an alarm system on his jar of Slim Jims.

“Invalid Pin,” the machine said. I got two more chances, and then the machine cut me off.

“What? I only get three shots?” I said to myself. “I was just warming up.”

The next day, the same scene repeated. Thus, I found myself sitting in Bank of China, a paper slip in my hand with a number on it, waiting to see a bank teller who probably spoke no English. Three hours passed. Finally they called me up. “Hi,” the bank teller said, “Please show me your passport.”

“Oh,” I said, “I, um, don’t have it.”

And that was the end of that. Back on the bus, a total failure. But I returned to the bank the next day, this time equipped with my passport. Make me sit there pointlessly for 3 hours once, shame on you. Make me sit there pointlessly for 3 hours twice, then you have a lot in common with the last two Lord of the Rings movies. Anyways, I ended up waiting a mere hour and a half on the second trip, before finally being called up to the teller.

(Apparently banks in China have notoriously poor service, due to the fact that they’re all government run. This leads to them being seriously understaffed and not particularly motivated by the ‘customer is always right’ mantra.)

“Nee Hao!” I said, enthusiastically. Then I tried to explain what was going on.

The teller was baffled. She called over the manager, who could speak some English. “What is the problem?” she asked.

“Well, it’s my fault, really. I can’t seem to remember my pin number.”

“I see,” she said, motioning to a keypad on the counter in front of me. “We can help you change it. Just type your pin number on the keypad.”

“Um, but that’s the problem. I don’t know it.”

She looked confused. “You don’t know it? Try to guess.”

I typed in a few numbers, again failing miserably. “Can’t you look it up in the computer or something?”

The manager practically burst out laughing at this suggestion. “It is your secret number. How are we supposed to know what it is?”

I stared at her like she was crazy, and she stared at me like I was crazy. “Because you’re the bank. You’ve got to have the number on file someplace…”

The teller twisted the computer screen to show me. “See?” the manager said. “In our computer system, in the password spot, it just says xxxxxx.”

“So how do I change it?”

“You can only change your password by typing in the original password.”

“What? This can’t be happening. Don’t you have a procedure for what happens when someone forgets their password?”

“No.”

“But this has to have happened before? Are you telling me that nobody has ever forgotten their password before?”

“No,” she said. “You are the only one.”

She really said that, and she was serious. It was not a sarcastic statement. We decided, finally, that I would have to fill out a form declaring my card lost (or something to that effect), and in one week the bank would be able to wipe the pin number out of the system and replace it. “Fine,” I said. “While I’m here, though, I’ll need to withdraw some money.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Huh?” I was beginning to get upset. I told myself to keep cool. “I have no food. I need to eat. What do you mean it’s impossible?”

“It is impossible to withdraw money without putting your pin number in.”

“But I’m here,” I said, my voice wavering with desperation. “I have my ID. Here’s my passport. You know it’s me. Are you seriously saying I can’t have my own money because I forgot the pin number?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I cannot let you withdraw from your account unless you type in correct number. It is for security.”

The next twenty minutes were not the proudest moments of my life. I yelled. I demanded my money. I lectured the manager on the nature of passwords, how they’re supposed to stand in for identification when there’s just a machine there, nothing that can look at a person’s proper ID, and how this was insanity, the importance of the pin surpassing my being there, in physical form, me, my body and face, my real identity. Who was I? Had I become some number in a computer that nobody knew? I shouted until the security people came over. Five o’clock came and the bank closed. I refused to leave. I accused them of stealing my money. I had to eat and they were killing me. Again and again I waved my passport around and stated my name.

What did it matter? I’d lost the key, forgotten the combination to my locker, and I eventually left the bank with my head held low. Defeated. Rejected. Over a month would pass before the bank finally resolved the forgotten pin number problem. In that time I did what any person living in the modern world would do, and I put every last living expense I incurred on my credit card. See, MasterCard believes it’s really me…as long as someone keeps paying them every month.

I sat in my apartment after the bank incident and thought about things. I could lose my passport, have my face sawed off in a terrible carpentry accident, change my name to Cap’n Crunch, and none of that would make much of a difference, not as long as I kept track of all my usernames and passwords. A digital version of me had taken my place, like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as if I woke up one morning and I was gone, replaced, by some sort of computerized file.

What if the entire universe is based on code, and most of us just don’t know it? The cure for cancer, the key to finding love after forty, the secret to losing back fat – they probably all exist, somewhere, and are just very powerfully password protected.

*

Bullshit In The News!

I have no life. I sit around my apartment all the time doing nothing, goofing off on the Internet. Now, this is bad, because it means that my lame ass has nothing interesting to write in this blog. However, it’s also good, because I’ve been able to locate some amazing news stories that clearly the general public needs to know about. They’re unimportant, stupid, and great!

Super! Now that the boring background information is out of the way, let’s dive into this week’s most awesome, ridiculous news stories, in Topiclessbar’s amazing new feature: “Bullshit In The News!”

Story #1: British Man Cooks and Eats His Own Finger

Let’s say you get in an accident, and your finger is cut off. Would you A) throw the finger away, B) use the finger to entertain people at parties, or C) eat the finger. Well, recently a man named Dave Playpenz – yes, take a moment to savor that name – ate his own finger after it was severed in a motorcycle accident. Playpenz admits to being “curious” about cannibalism and saw this as his one opportunity to satisfy that curiosity. I guess if he gets in another accident next week and loses a leg, it’ll sort of be like ordering seconds.

Final Judgement: It’s not cool to eat your own body parts unless you are a chicken, in which case I would understand coating your wings with buffalo sauce and going to town.

(Read More: http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/?articleID=2000081937&story_title=Kenya-Lifestyle:%20Man%20eats%20his%20own%20finger%20after%20accident)

Story #2: Author Barred From GLAAD Awards

Bret Easton Ellis, the guy who wrote the novel “American Psycho,” was told this week that he’s not allowed to attend the GLAAD Awards, after making offensive comments on Twitter. Ellis (who, if you’re curious, is gay), tweeted that watching Glee is like “stepping in a puddle of AIDS.” He also said actor Matt Bomer couldn’t play Christian Grey in the upcoming 50 Shades of Grey movie, because he would “come off totally gay in white collar.” Personally, I think that I only come off a little gay when I put on my leather bondage gear.

Final Judgement: I love Bret Easton Ellis. And at least we all learned that AIDS can apparently come in puddle form.

(Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/22/bret-easton-ellis-glaad-awards-banned_n_3131913.html)

Story #3: News Anchor Has Bad First Day

On his first day as the anchor for a news program in North Dakota, AJ Clement made a little mistake. Mumbling into his live microphone, he began the newscast by clearly saying the words “fucking shit.” Not really what you’re supposed to begin the 5:00 news with. Clement proceeded to bumble his way through the rest of the program, and then got fired afterwards. One newscast and done. A rough day at work, but still better than the guy in Story #4…

Final Judgement: It’s just a bad idea in general to talk to yourself out loud. Keep that fucking shit to yourself, guy.

(Watch the Video!: http://www.enstarz.com/articles/16708/20130422/tv-anchor-suspended-video-j-clement-fired-air-f-ing.htm)

Story #4: Teacher Beats Student, Then Beats His Own Penis

Sigh. I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence. A South Korean teacher was arrested last week after flipping out in class, physically attacking one of his students, and then rushing out into the hallway of the school and masturbating. School administrators were shocked, as this was NOT in his lesson plan. The police released the teacher after determining that he “does not appear to have any mental problems.” This conclusion seems odd, and makes me wonder what goes on in the hallway of the police station.

Final Judgement: It’s pretty bad when assaulting someone is the second worst thing you do in a day.

(Watch the Video!: http://www.koreabang.com/2013/stories/korean-teacher-beats-up-student-then-masturbates-in-hallway.html)

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the rest of your day, and if you’re feeling down, just be glad you aren’t AJ Clement, or the janitor of that school in Seoul. I’ll be back later this week with a fun entry about going nuts in Bank of China. Adios muchachos!

*

The Strange Spot On This Planet That I Call Home

Back in November, I interviewed for a job in Beijing, China. Two weeks later, I’d signed a contract. A few months after that, I was on a plane to Beijing Capital International Airport. What greeted me – the place where I found myself – let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected. Yesterday was nice and sunny and so I went for a stroll and took some pictures. And thus I present to you my new home, for better or for worse. Cheers!

This is the outside of the campus where my apartment is. Right off the bat, I want to say that my school is quite awesome and that I really believe there’s some good stuff going on. It’s a school I’m proud to be teaching at. Yes.

What follows is my journey any time I wish to go off campus. Out in front of the school is a two lane highway. A public bus comes about once every ten minutes. Apart from the bus and some cars, the area is really empty.

Evidence of emptiness.

The bus takes about 15 minutes to get into town (not downtown Beijing, that takes 90 minutes) and stops running at 7:30 pm. Now, if I don’t feel like taking the bus into town, there is a village. It’s a short walk. Here are the stairs that mark the starting point.

Up the stairs, and down the winding path through the trees.

Four minutes through the trees brings us to an exit. The village is close.

Now it’s a walk down this stretch of road. Again, this isn’t the Beijing I had pictured. But, like anywhere, one gets used to the surroundings. Especially when there’s a random head by the side of the road.

We’ve finally reached the village. Hurray!

Here is the grocery store. There are always dogs outside…

…and exciting rides for kids.

In all seriousness, the village is pretty depressing. It’s an extremely poor area. Last semester, my school brought in children from the village’s elementary school, so that the wealthy kids attending my school could talk to the village kids and learn about their lives. My school planned to involve them more this semester, but we were told that the elementary school in the village was shut down. Closed. No one seems to know why, or what the village kids are doing now that they don’t have a school.

Village barber shop. Reminiscent of Super Cuts.

Probably it’s needless to say that I wasn’t too pleased to be living here at first. But I’m getting into it. It’s okay, nothing to complain about. Here’s Mickey Mouse. At Disney World, they say it’s a small world after all. That isn’t really true. The world isn’t small at all, but when you stay in one certain place long enough, I can see how it feels that way.

The Girl with the Flowered Underwear

Of all the curious idiosyncrasies of the human race, people’s unique behavioral
blips, I’ve always been baffled by the decision some strange individuals make to wear underwear that has flowers on it. It’s definitely not sexy, unless one has a fetish for wallpaper, and from a strictly aesthetic perspective, a floral print can only be visually pleasing to those who think quilted Bounty paper towels are fine art. Mind you, I’m not against underwear that has personality – in fact, I own one pair of boxers with the Super Mario Brothers on it and another that retells the Little Red Riding Hood story (literary lingerie, there’s an idea, market it if you have the time). It’s just that flowers seem tacky. Grandmotherish. And flowers are also the most obvious vaginal symbol I can think of (right, Georgia O’Keefe?); a girl with flowered panties is sort of like a guy wearing tighty whities covered in bananas and The Washington Monument.

One Sunday evening, I found myself sitting in my room, the nervous breakdown that I’d been having for the previous three weeks beginning to subside slightly. I’d been hiding all weekend, terrified at the idea of seeing another human being, wanting only to be left alone, in the dark cavern of my apartment, taking shelter in my cave like an agoraphobic bear or an early 2000s Bin Laden. I’d hear people outside in the lobby of the apartment building, talking and laughing, and my heart would pound. Why were they out there? When would they leave? Their presence was cancer, a black widow spider hanging above my bed on its string, they were there to get me, I had to stay safe. The building was full of threats. Stepping outside my apartment was Russian Roulette, spin the barrel, pull the trigger, listen for noise.

For over a month I hadn’t done any laundry because the laundry room was down the hallway and I was too petrified of people to force myself to go. I figured it was easier to wear the same dirty underwear, BO scented shirts, and soy sauce stained jeans than risk running into someone in the public laundry room. But on this Sunday, the hallway was quiet, and I was feeling adventurous. I threw some clothes in a bag and literally sprinted across the lobby to the laundry room. The washer was all in Chinese and I had no idea how to work it. Whatever. I tossed my clothes in, poured a bunch of detergent on top like a Canadian eating pancakes and going heavy on the maple syrup, and punched buttons until the machine started. What was the worst that could happen? I’d either end up with clean clothes or turn the apartment building into The Impossible.

Forty five minutes passed. It was time to make the transfer to the dryer. I gave myself a pep talk, pumping myself up, like someone does before walking over hot coals, and then I darted back to the laundry room. There was only one dryer not currently in use but, to my horror, someone had left clothes inside it. I cursed under my breath and ran back to my room. Twenty minutes later I repeated the process, pep talk, 15 meter dash, dryer check. The same clothes sat in the dryer, left and abandoned, shed and forgotten, the same way cats leave their fur all over the place.

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. I knew that I didn’t have it in me to come back again. Whoever was doing this was torturing me. I opened the dryer and started taking the clothes out, throwing them on top of the machine. To hell with it. My head ached. There’s a privacy agreement inherent in any Laundromat and I was breaking it, smashing it with each t-shirt or sock I tossed out of the dryer’s warm circular metal embrace.

And I would have kept going, had it not been for what I was unearthing. Panties. Lots and lots of panties. Whoever was responsible for this had washed a record amount of underwear, lifetimes worth. Flowered panties, tons of them, descending from the dryer, falling down onto my face, like I was an opera singer and the crowd was pelting me with roses.

How could I leave some girl’s underwear out in the open for anyone to gawk at? I only wanted to dry my clothes, not humiliate anyone. Anger filled me as I held the girl’s floral patterned panties in my hand. I imagined that if I was single, maybe one day I’d have a romantic hook up with one of my coworkers, bring her back to my apartment. Things would get heavy, bra unlatched, and I’d slide her jeans off, only to recognize this same pair of flowered panties snug around her hips. Passion would die right there. The lights would have to come on, and instead of sex, she would get a long lecture on laundry etiquette.

“Hours! You left your clothes in the dryer for hours! What kind of girl just leaves her panties in a public space like that? Have you no decency?!?”

It was no use. I put all of the mystery girl’s clothes back in the dryer, then took my soaking wet laundry and stuffed it in my bag. Returning to my apartment, I hung my drenched clothes around the place like I was redecorating, putting socks on bookshelves as if they were family photographs.

“I finally did some laundry,” I sighed. “I should feel happy.”

It was true. I was alone and safe, with wet clothes sitting in my closet, while some stranger was out and about, possibly having the time of her life, her laundry a minor detail of her day, already forgotten.

*

Psychedelic Panic Pizza, Heat 120 Seconds

So many unexplainable things happen every year, it was only a matter of time until the fantastic reached me. UFOs in Jerusalem. Spontaneous human combustion on the Seoul subway. The high ratings for Honey Boo Boo. Things like that. And then last week, I had a personal experience that walked the same path, out of our reality and into another one. I probably sound facetious, but that’s just out of habit – after 25 years of being a sarcastic asshole, it’s difficult to sound sincere. As crazy as it sounds, this post is done in true sincerity. It is the story of how I had an intense journey, a trip across the dark side of the mushroom, brought on by a microwavable pizza bought at Walmart.

I’m aware of how crazy it sounds. People don’t have their perception altered by pizza, and the worst thing microwaveable food can do to a person is give them a muffin top. My rational side understands this. But then I think back to what happened, and I shudder.

It all began around 5:00 PM on Wednesday. I needed to pick up a few things, so I took the 21 bus from my school to the Walmart located in Chang Ping. The bus was packed and the ride was hell. I’d been in an edgy mood all day, and the crowded bus/crowded store didn’t help any. I bought some crap, and then wondered what to eat for dinner. I haven’t had pizza in ages, and I came across some microwaveable ones in the frozen food section. Not DiGiorno or Mama Celeste or anything like that. I found a different brand with a promising name – Pizza Delicious.

Now let’s pause for a moment to analyze the box. First, let’s note the text used to spell the words “Pizza” and “Delicious.” Clearly, this is the same font utilized by The Grateful Dead and other bands of the psychedelic era. The box sort of looks like a poster you’d see hanging in Haight-Ashbury in the late 60s. Secondly, notice the green swoosh above the words. It’s as though they’re telling you this pizza will take you places, another galaxy, the sixth dimension. Hey Mr. Spaceman, won’t you please take me and my Pizza Delicious along, we won’t do anything wrong. Thirdly, note the shape of the pizza. It sort of looks like an LSD microdot with toppings.

Turn on, heat for 120 seconds on high power, drop out.

The pizza pictured on the box is one thing, but the monstrosity inside was a whole different story. Here, below, is what I discovered upon unsealing my Pizza Delicious.

Yes, I know. It looks like scrambled eggs thrown on top of a dry pita. After microwaving it, the enormous mountain of frozen cheese melted, revealing a hidden assortment of mushrooms, sausage, and corn. No sauce to speak of. Although it still appeared to be made by someone with dementia, I was starving and so I decided to eat the thing. The crust had a nice sweet taste to it. The glob of random items on top had no taste, which might have been for the best.

About twenty minutes after I ate the fucker, strange things began happening. I felt euphoric, lightheaded and blissful. Everything seemed hilarious and I couldn’t stop laughing at shit on my Facebook newsfeed. At the time, I thought I was simply in a good mood. In hindsight, the pizza had obviously intoxicated me, making everything appear wonderful. That all changed when I made the poor decision to go to sleep.

I woke up at one o’clock in the morning. My proprioception was gone. I felt as though my body had vanished on me, like I’d been drawn and quartered in the night and all that was left of me was a torso. Where were my arms? I couldn’t feel my legs. I was hysterical. I stood fast, looking down on my body’s completion, a dandelion that hadn’t had its appendages blown off yet. Still, something felt incredibly wrong. I was drowning, sensations sinking into the interior of my head, my brain fluid was a green river carrying away my thoughts. Skin burning, sweat soaking my hair. I had to move, couldn’t stay still or I’d die. I ran out into the living room and turned on all the lights, kicking my legs, hopping up and down. Hands had gone numb, feet were tingling. My blood was out of circulation, red light stopped, my tongue had fur on it. The dryness in my mouth was unbearable, it felt filled with cotton, and I started drinking water but that only made me vomit burp, acid filling my throat as if I had some kind of internal straw running down into my stomach and I was sucking the liquid up through it.

In reality, I was having a panic attack. I’ve had them all my life, and they never seem to get any easier. I felt so incredibly helpless. I saw the pizza box in the trash, laughing at me, the bastard had poisoned me and was going to kill me. Why the fuck did I eat it? Obviously the pizza wasn’t right, a death trap, as smart as eating raw beef. Part of my mind was convinced this was the BIG END, that I was going to faint and never wake up. The other part of my mind tried to stay rational. I had to find my neutral space, create an environment that would settle me down. In the meantime, I’d keep running around the living room. Stopping could prove fatal.

It took two hours before I was able to sit still. I had to find the right amount of light (full darkness except the soft glow of my desk lamp). The silence was terrifying, and so I put on Joni Mitchell, turned her voice to the exact volume I needed. I made myself tea. And ultimately I laid in the bed and let the calmness take over. My body started to reappear, gain focus, as if I was looking at myself through a camera and adjusting the lens. Eyes shut, I saw two black birds fly up to the top of my skull, its morning, twirling in circles, intertwining, a braid of dark hair escalating through the sky. A feeling of full relaxation overtook me. Shear delirium, I was split into two, a child and its own care giver. The idea was beautiful. All of this, the entire experience, had a purpose, and I could sense that inside this gentle division.

I was a patient and a nurse, an infant and its father. I could feel my own forehead for fever, kiss my own bruises. Fuck, this is what the Pizza Delicious needed to tell me. That I could take care of myself, not be afraid, that I was my own protection against the world and against death and maybe against myself as well.

In the morning, I felt exhausted. I took a hot shower.

Everything was back to normal, and I wanted to cry.

*

The Sheep Cafe: Cause Nothin’ Complements a Latte like Livestock

As a fan of random, pointless things, I was drawn to Seoul’s “Thanks Nature Cafe.” With all these Starbucks everywhere, little independently owned establishments need a gimmick to survive, and the Thanks Nature Cafe has…well…a unique one. Mixing high-end coffee with a small herd, the cafe is home to not just one, but two (yes two!) sheep, who live in a pen right outside the front door. Why? Don’t ask questions like that. Just drink your coffee and behold the wonderful sheep decor the interior boasts.

The sheep live in a small fenced off enclosure, down in the center area between the coffee shop and a few stores. There’s a little doghouse (sheephouse?) for them to go in when they feel they’re lacking privacy. In the summer, the weather gets too hot for them to handle and the sheep are taken away. I’m not sure if this hurts business, but one would guess it would, just as removing the animals living in other coffee shops likely diminishes their revenues as well.

What more is there to say about the Sheep Cafe? Um, not a whole lot. I’m told that the place makes visiting Australians feel at home, and that the cafe owners frown upon shearing. Really, though, I’m happy places like this exist. As much as I love Starbucks, it hasn’t exactly helped in making life less boring. Take Starbucks and its copy-cat knocks-offs and add them to all the ubiquitous corner stores and supermarkets and fast food joints. Human consumption has gotten really dull, the art of sitting in a chair at a table and putting something in one’s face. At least by having the two awkward sheep outside, I felt like I was experiencing something different. Taking part in a special happening, including myself in a hip scene.

I read on PBS.org that sheep can recognize each other and can also recognize human faces. In addition to making me want to write a really bad mystery story (picture this – police lineup of criminals, a sheep brought in to identify the murderer), knowing this makes me want to go back to the Sheep Cafe. I want to be recognized. I want the Starbucks girl to tell me apart from the other customers, but that never seems to happen. Maybe a couple ewes will take the time to notice. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Tension and Fury with the Elderly on the Seoul Subway

Part One – In Which I Bash an Old Lady with a Suitcase

The Seoul subway is packed, just like always, and, also like always, I’m in a shitty mood. It’s mid-January and I’m headed to the airport, on my way to Hong Kong, a giant green suitcase containing half of my worldly possessions by my side, ready to make the trip with me. To get to the subway train, I must go down a staircase. I lift my suitcase, carrying it with both hands like a battering ram, and head down the stairs, taking the first step at the exact moment the train arrives. Approximately 8 million people get off the train and start walking up the staircase, flooding it, a tidal wave of Asians, coming right at me.

I sigh. I’m hugging the wall on the right hand side, as I feel I should be. One would think the people going up would do the same, two lanes, street traffic, headed in opposite directions, but they’re not. They’re spread out. This doesn’t deter me. I put my head down, the green suitcase held out before me, and walk with great speed, gaining inertia as I descend.

“Excuse me!” I yell. “Coming through!”

People duck out of the way, dodging me and muttering angry things in Korean. At least they’re moving, and I’m getting close to the bottom. But then I see an old woman, right in my path, walking up the stairs while texting. Why is an old woman texting? Why hasn’t technology passed her by, and who the hell is she talking too? Probably the retirement home, to tell them she’s escaped. She’s completely oblivious. It’s like a game a chicken and one person is asleep behind the wheel.

“Watch out!” I shout. That seems more pleasant than, “Move, bitch, get out the way!” The old woman continues towards me with her head down. I decide not to veer off, as I have heavy luggage and she should be the one that moves, and we collide. The suitcase wallops her good. She staggers to the side a bit and lets out a furious scream, shocked by what’s happened. I respond by saying “Pay attention!” and then make my way to the end of the staircase.

I don’t look back. It wasn’t my fault.

Maybe she’s learned a lesson about the dangers of texting. Or I’ve given Old Lady 21^st Century something to blog about. Because she probably has a blog, with an upcoming entry called, “The Damn White Bastard Motherfucker.”

Part Two – Things Get Tense with an Old Man

Mid February. Back in the subway station, a black suitcase this time, containing the second half of my worldly possessions. Another flight, the last leg of the move. I’m standing on the platform waiting for the train, my suitcase beside me like a son (in a bag, I dunno). There’s no one else in the general area and I’m poised to drag my luggage right onto the train when it comes. And then another person appears.

He’s old, probably in his sixties, with wrinkled skin and an Oakland A’s cap. Despite the fact that I’m obviously first in line, the old man doesn’t fall into place behind me, but instead stands directly next to me. I start to feel tense. There’s no reason for this – it isn’t crowded. Why can’t he just let me and my luggage get on the train first? I know that he’ll push his way by me. It’s happened a million times before with these old Asians. I grit my teeth. There’s no way I’m letting him ahead of me.

The train arrives, doors open. I pick up my suitcase and start heading on. The old man goes darts forward, and I feel his body press up against me, trying to push his way past. I guess I could simply let him go, but that’s ludicrous, and instead I position myself in front of him, cutting off his path. He doesn’t yield. Pushes harder.

That’s it. I’m pissed.

I turn and put my hand directly in the center of his chest and shove him back. “Stop it, God damn it!” Like the old woman I bashed with the suitcase, he’s shocked. I make my way onto the train and he steps on after me with hate in his eyes and his jaw agape. “Can’t you wait a second?” I say. I’m sure he doesn’t know a word of English but I don’t care. “I’m getting on the train. Don’t fucking push me.”

Riding the train, I start thinking. Really, if I’m honest with myself, standing on the platform before the train came, I was kind of hoping he would try to push past me. I wanted to do something, make a stand, just as I wanted that old lady to keep walking up the staircase so I could ram her with my suitcase. In truth, I was sick of Koreans being rude on the subway, and I was salivating at the opportunity to confront someone.

“My God,” I thought, “I’m like the George Zimmerman of the Seoul subway.”

Sometimes, standing up against something, be it thieves in the neighborhood or rude people on the subway, becomes a matter of personal need, an action waiting for a target. Maybe I shouldn’t have been such an asshole on the subway. I looked up at the monitor to see where I was.

Dorimcheon. I looked back at the old man and hung my head in shame.

I’d gotten on the wrong damn train.

*

I Don’t Want To Shower, I Don’t Want To Blog, And I Don’t Want To Eat Brain

I could feel the funk settling in. My floor was littered with unwashed clothes, and I hadn’t showered in two days. That’s the thing about depression – there are generally signs of it everywhere. See, depression doesn’t sneak up on you like Oscar Pistorious’ girlfriend on Valentine’s Day; it slowly makes itself at home. One day you sleep until noon but shrug it off. Then, before you know it, you haven’t shaved in two weeks and you’re suddenly listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell.

Well, at least that’s what happened to me. Relocating to China was beginning to wear me down, bum me out. Moving someplace new, really, is a lot like buying a porn magazine. Sure, the new issue of “Juggs” is thrilling for a day or two, but pretty quickly it gets boring, depressing to own, and you want it to go away. So was the case with China, at least in the early stages. The first few days were fun, but then I didn’t want to see its breasts any more, metaphorically speaking.

“Hey,” I said on the phone, calling one of the school coordinators, “I don’t mean to complain, but I can’t get any hot water in the shower.”

“Oh, you know it gets turned off, right?” she responded.

“No, I had no idea. What time does it get turned off?”

“7:30 AM.”

As soon as the number left her mouth, I knew I would not be showering again. Sure, getting up at that time would be fine when classes began. Until then, while the school was on vacation and I wasted the two weeks away memorizing the lyrics to “Blue” and attempting to feel better about myself by watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” there would be no way I’d be able to wake in time for the hot water. No, I would become dirty and disgusting, like a homeless person or someone vacationing with Carnival Cruise Lines. I considered my options – taking a cold shower or investing in a good bottle of cologne and bathing in the style of so many great Italians before me – and decided to just sleep more.

Writing this blog also seemed impossible. The Great Firewall of China was proving to be a greater foe than I had anticipated. Without exaggerating, I seriously spent about 10 hours trying to put a stupid Mitch Hedberg picture in my AIDS post, getting kicked offline by the proxy server over and over again. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “When I read there were Internet blocks in China, I didn’t expect that to apply to me!”

And then there was food. It took about a week to find a grocery store that stocked it. Finally I did, and I ran back home with delight, having purchased a whole chicken, cooked rotisserie style. I got home and cut it up with kitchen scissors. Starving, I devoured it. At one point, I was trying to gnaw the flesh off some part of the chicken – what appeared to be a wing – and was having trouble. I took the chicken from my lips and looked at it.

“What the hell is this?” I thought. Right after that I rotated it in my fingers, like it was back on the rotisserie, the image turning right side up, and that’s about the time my heart stopped. “Dear God…it’s the head!”

Yes, apparently the head of the chicken is not removed in the grocery store, and I had been nibbling on it. It was a horrifying sight to behold. Brown, soft and gelatinous, its empty eye socket stared up at me. “Fuckin’ shit!” I screamed, throwing its face back down onto my plate. It had to go, immediately. I grabbed a fork and thrust it down upon the chicken head, puncturing it through one of its eye sockets. Dinner had turned into a nightmare, and there was a gooey brown head on the end of my fork like a piece of fudge brownie from hell.

Afterwards, the chicken head flushed down the toilet, I sat on the bed and shook. I felt like a murderer. Terrible thoughts ran through my head. I pictured purchasing a bucket of KFC and opening it to find Colonel Sanders’ decapitated head inside.

Thankfully, things started getting better. Just as depression is quite apparent at its onset, it’s easy to tell when it’s left too. Things began to make sense and a new routine started to form. Plus, I got my passport back, which meant a quick trip to Korea to see my wonderful girlfriend, and if anything can get a guy over the self-loathing that comes from having eaten something’s scalp, love can.

*