Aloha, bitches
Well, surprise, surprise, her— hold on a sec. That Levitra ad is on T.V. right now. That one with the somber warning: "If an erection lasts longer than four hours, seek medical attention immediately." I mean, fellas, can you even imagine? It boggles the mind ... and would probably throb real bad.
Anyways, here I am in beautiful, rainy Aiea, Hawaii. Some laudable sucker in the area has left a wireless connection unprotected, and it trickles in through my cousin's window. So I'm sitting here killing time because my cousin doesn't get in from Naval exercises until tomorrow afternoon.
It's been a pretty weird day. My cousin's roommate who let me into the house didn't even know I was coming. So I threw my stuff into Mike's room, changed clothes, and struck out for adventure. Really, I just wanted to go take some pictures, grab some food, maybe do some shopping. Little did I realize that Mike lives deep in the heart of a hilly suburban paradise. I also forgot that Austin has more restaurants per capita than almost any other city, and I shouldn't assume other cities have eateries at my fingertips — or even within remote walking distance.
I also rememberede about a mile into my walk that my cousin had told me it rains here every day, and true to form, a misty, intermittent drizzle followed me around all day. Eventually, let's say four miles later, I stumbled up to the only restaurant I could find in the entire city, a Sizzler, feint with hunger. Strangely, no one was in there to take my money, so back into the street I went. Eventually I realized that there was an entire underground mall beneath the block I'd circled — the only sign of it was a Macy's above ground with an oversized parking lot. It turned out to be like three stories. Strange.
Long story short: I finally got some food, some board shorts, and even some good photos on the long walk back.
A couple things of note today:
* While the plane was boarding this morning in Houston, they were playing luaua muzak. This really got on my nerves after a while. I mean, it's basically the equivalent of playing an accoustic version of "Home on the Range" in every plane bound for Texas.
* A Gamestop in the mall had a T.V. with Red vs. Blue advertisements in its front window. (My friend Jason Saldana is one of the creators.)
* I saw a mongoose running around in a drainage ditch.
* Another drainage ditch had about three feet of water backed up in it, and living in that water were literally thousands of fish. It looked like a hatchery about 100 yards from the highway.
* A lot of people in Hawaii are, surprisingly, Hawaiian — that is, of some Eastern Asian descent. The governor, however, is a pasty white lady. I'm not sure how much I should read into this. A lot, I think.
* As far as scenic stuff goes, I saw a shit ton of flowers and two simultaneous rainbows.
Okay, below I'll post what I wrote on the plane this morning. It wasn't really meant to be a blog post, but since I'm here and I've got the connection, I'll throw it up. It's really long, but I'm too tired to edit it. I've been up since 5.30 a.m. CST. Whew.
---
Empire, you just got served!
Continental flight 1, seat 36L. They guy next to me in 36K is passed out with a copy of The Bible Code in his lap. On the back cover: “#1 Worldwide Bestseller!” He’s not nearly as attractive as the rich girl who sat across from me in the terminal: blonde hair with fashionable purple streaks, lots of makeup, maroon velvet jump suit, cute big-ass purse. Grady would’ve wanted to marry her. She was friendly enough; alas, fate placed her and her well proportioned bosom in row 39.
Mark Twain: knew what he was talking about. I just read “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” Twain’s satiric attack on the hypocrisy of our actions in the Phillipines at the turn of the 20th century. (See also "Corn-pone Opinions" for another wonderful take on politics. I know none of you will follow those links, but you really should.) We should all be familiar with the people sitting in darkness: they are the people we so generously liberated in Iraq, the people to whom we (and our imperial predecessors) brought civilization, the people who observed our ways and rightfully distrusted us when we said we were acting in their best interest — the people we want to impale with our freedom. Ah, but some of Twain’s anger has rubbed off on me. His, like mine, comes from a sense of righteousness that the country he was raised to believe in, whether it ever actually existed or not, should be above the trappings of unrestrained power, material profit, and the exploitation of patriotism. His indictment is not aimed solely at his country — every nation with power commits these sins — but it is specific to the place he knows best and loves dearest.
It is a sentiment I see echoed so many other places that I wonder if its cause — the inability of our leaders to resist the temptations of power — is an intrinsic and inevitable flaw of all democracies. Perhaps we are a race damned to repeatedly write the same things while our leaders commit the same transgressions because people, by their very nature, rarely, if ever, elect a writer to lead the country—and because a writer, by his very individualistic nature, is rarely, if ever, capable of leading a country.
I was thinking all this over, and agreeing with a great deal of it, when I realized the T.V. screen in front of me was showing You Got Served. Awesome. What a great movie. Retarded, of course, but great. There were, as near as I could tell, three types of scenes in the movie: people greeting each other, people confronting each other, and dance-offs. The spider’s silk that held the movie together was made from a hodgepodge of clichés from the typical black “urban” experience (spoiler warning): the community center, the kindly, outrageous grandmamma, some drug dealers, an innocent child (named .Little Saint) “getting sprayed” and dying, lots of euphemisms for making money, a dash of Baptist spirituality, Lil’ Kim, and, of course, a villainous white dance troupe from the O.C. with really, really bad hair, who’s primary dance move seems to be to grab their collective crotches, coming down into your hood and hustling your crew out of $5,000. I give it four stars.
We’re somewhere over Arizona right now. It’s the first time I’ve flown over desert and mountains. They’re a lot more interesting than cities. I’ve attempted several photographs, all of which are sure to fail—shooting through two foggy windows makes geological formations look like God’s first attempts at watercolor.
I noticed this morning that I’m finally starting to develop a flying routine. I flew maybe twice my entire life until this semester. Now after New York, D. C., and today, I’ve found that I like to arrive early at the airport so as to take my time checking in. Then I wander around a bit, taking in the peculiarities of each airport. I try to keep my Optio handy, because airports offer lots of interesting pictures. The problem is most of them pass quickly. Already I missed one good shot today—of a cleaning woman leaning on her broom in front of a giant lit-up terminal … I guess you would have had to seen it. Anyways, after that I get some coffee or a little breakfast and a New York Times and kick it in the food court for a bit. After some good people-watchin’, I finally make my way to my gate, whenever possible using those totally kick-ass moving sidewalks straight out of the Jetsons (obscure reference: It’s like I’m tearing ass around Bush International. Except I’m standing still. Still waters run deep.). Doing double-time at half the effort on those things always reminds me of a dream, one in which you can float or run extra fast or jump super far.
Once on the plane, there comes that crucial and most painful of chores: finding out who’s sitting next to you. Today I got luck. The guy never said a word to me. No that I necessarily have a problem talking to my neighbor, but I always embark on a journey with great literary ambitions—both creative and consumptive. The trick is to find that proper balance between a little pleasant banter and being left mostly alone to read my books and write my masterpieces. And I always prefer to err on the side of anonymity.
Such a random mass of people also provides, of course, the chance for romance. Just today, at my gate, I saw an aging buck, graying at his tips yet still with a musk about him, running some solid game on a just-past-her-prime doe who’s perhaps seen a little too much sun in her day. Then again, if it is the impersonality of an airport that promises mystery and excitement, it comes at the price of anonymity and a lack of accountability. Was their giggly chat a budding fairy tale, as in Alain de Boton’s book On Love, or a fuck and run straight out of Penthouse Forum (or, I dunno, one of my parties)? Of course, 99 times out of 100, the answer is neither, and we single people all find our seats next to J. Random middle-aged person a little sheepishly, having actually allowed ourselves even a dip into this foolish fantasy.
Oh shit, while I was typing we soared right over California and are now crossing the Pacific Ocean. Looking out my window: Yep, it’s blue. I could for a drink and a pee right now. I may have to wake up the sleeping scripture scholar in a bit.
This marks the first time I’ve ever left the continental United States. I tried to pack appropriately for such a trip. I brought an old, faithful friend, E. B. White; a little hot sizzle: Mark Twain’s vitriolic writing on “the damned human race”; an epic storyteller telling his epic story, T. E. Lawrence and his Seven Pillars of Wisdom; and someone I’ve been meaning to make amends with for quite some time, V. S. Naipaul. But on my uncle’s bookshelf in Houston I came across a collection of Roger Angell’s essays on baseball. I decided that this was a vacation, so I had postpone Naipaul and the enigma of his arrival, giving his place in my bag to Angell’s nostalgia. Jumping into the middle of a constructed paradise doesn’t exactly give one the clearest sense of what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. I’ll save that for when I finally move out of Texas. So in the end, I wound up with two elegiac old boys of the New Yorker school (Angell was the son by previous marriage of White’s wife, Katherine Angell, if memory serves correctly) and one curmudgeon to keep my perspective in its proper balance. We’ll see if Lawrence of Arabia and his tales of the desert ever make it out of my suitcase. I might stick to just the red dirt of the baseball diamond this trip.
Well, surprise, surprise, her— hold on a sec. That Levitra ad is on T.V. right now. That one with the somber warning: "If an erection lasts longer than four hours, seek medical attention immediately." I mean, fellas, can you even imagine? It boggles the mind ... and would probably throb real bad.
Anyways, here I am in beautiful, rainy Aiea, Hawaii. Some laudable sucker in the area has left a wireless connection unprotected, and it trickles in through my cousin's window. So I'm sitting here killing time because my cousin doesn't get in from Naval exercises until tomorrow afternoon.
It's been a pretty weird day. My cousin's roommate who let me into the house didn't even know I was coming. So I threw my stuff into Mike's room, changed clothes, and struck out for adventure. Really, I just wanted to go take some pictures, grab some food, maybe do some shopping. Little did I realize that Mike lives deep in the heart of a hilly suburban paradise. I also forgot that Austin has more restaurants per capita than almost any other city, and I shouldn't assume other cities have eateries at my fingertips — or even within remote walking distance.
I also rememberede about a mile into my walk that my cousin had told me it rains here every day, and true to form, a misty, intermittent drizzle followed me around all day. Eventually, let's say four miles later, I stumbled up to the only restaurant I could find in the entire city, a Sizzler, feint with hunger. Strangely, no one was in there to take my money, so back into the street I went. Eventually I realized that there was an entire underground mall beneath the block I'd circled — the only sign of it was a Macy's above ground with an oversized parking lot. It turned out to be like three stories. Strange.
Long story short: I finally got some food, some board shorts, and even some good photos on the long walk back.
A couple things of note today:
* While the plane was boarding this morning in Houston, they were playing luaua muzak. This really got on my nerves after a while. I mean, it's basically the equivalent of playing an accoustic version of "Home on the Range" in every plane bound for Texas.
* A Gamestop in the mall had a T.V. with Red vs. Blue advertisements in its front window. (My friend Jason Saldana is one of the creators.)
* I saw a mongoose running around in a drainage ditch.
* Another drainage ditch had about three feet of water backed up in it, and living in that water were literally thousands of fish. It looked like a hatchery about 100 yards from the highway.
* A lot of people in Hawaii are, surprisingly, Hawaiian — that is, of some Eastern Asian descent. The governor, however, is a pasty white lady. I'm not sure how much I should read into this. A lot, I think.
* As far as scenic stuff goes, I saw a shit ton of flowers and two simultaneous rainbows.
Okay, below I'll post what I wrote on the plane this morning. It wasn't really meant to be a blog post, but since I'm here and I've got the connection, I'll throw it up. It's really long, but I'm too tired to edit it. I've been up since 5.30 a.m. CST. Whew.
---
Empire, you just got served!
Continental flight 1, seat 36L. They guy next to me in 36K is passed out with a copy of The Bible Code in his lap. On the back cover: “#1 Worldwide Bestseller!” He’s not nearly as attractive as the rich girl who sat across from me in the terminal: blonde hair with fashionable purple streaks, lots of makeup, maroon velvet jump suit, cute big-ass purse. Grady would’ve wanted to marry her. She was friendly enough; alas, fate placed her and her well proportioned bosom in row 39.
Mark Twain: knew what he was talking about. I just read “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” Twain’s satiric attack on the hypocrisy of our actions in the Phillipines at the turn of the 20th century. (See also "Corn-pone Opinions" for another wonderful take on politics. I know none of you will follow those links, but you really should.) We should all be familiar with the people sitting in darkness: they are the people we so generously liberated in Iraq, the people to whom we (and our imperial predecessors) brought civilization, the people who observed our ways and rightfully distrusted us when we said we were acting in their best interest — the people we want to impale with our freedom. Ah, but some of Twain’s anger has rubbed off on me. His, like mine, comes from a sense of righteousness that the country he was raised to believe in, whether it ever actually existed or not, should be above the trappings of unrestrained power, material profit, and the exploitation of patriotism. His indictment is not aimed solely at his country — every nation with power commits these sins — but it is specific to the place he knows best and loves dearest.
It is a sentiment I see echoed so many other places that I wonder if its cause — the inability of our leaders to resist the temptations of power — is an intrinsic and inevitable flaw of all democracies. Perhaps we are a race damned to repeatedly write the same things while our leaders commit the same transgressions because people, by their very nature, rarely, if ever, elect a writer to lead the country—and because a writer, by his very individualistic nature, is rarely, if ever, capable of leading a country.
I was thinking all this over, and agreeing with a great deal of it, when I realized the T.V. screen in front of me was showing You Got Served. Awesome. What a great movie. Retarded, of course, but great. There were, as near as I could tell, three types of scenes in the movie: people greeting each other, people confronting each other, and dance-offs. The spider’s silk that held the movie together was made from a hodgepodge of clichés from the typical black “urban” experience (spoiler warning): the community center, the kindly, outrageous grandmamma, some drug dealers, an innocent child (named .Little Saint) “getting sprayed” and dying, lots of euphemisms for making money, a dash of Baptist spirituality, Lil’ Kim, and, of course, a villainous white dance troupe from the O.C. with really, really bad hair, who’s primary dance move seems to be to grab their collective crotches, coming down into your hood and hustling your crew out of $5,000. I give it four stars.
We’re somewhere over Arizona right now. It’s the first time I’ve flown over desert and mountains. They’re a lot more interesting than cities. I’ve attempted several photographs, all of which are sure to fail—shooting through two foggy windows makes geological formations look like God’s first attempts at watercolor.
I noticed this morning that I’m finally starting to develop a flying routine. I flew maybe twice my entire life until this semester. Now after New York, D. C., and today, I’ve found that I like to arrive early at the airport so as to take my time checking in. Then I wander around a bit, taking in the peculiarities of each airport. I try to keep my Optio handy, because airports offer lots of interesting pictures. The problem is most of them pass quickly. Already I missed one good shot today—of a cleaning woman leaning on her broom in front of a giant lit-up terminal … I guess you would have had to seen it. Anyways, after that I get some coffee or a little breakfast and a New York Times and kick it in the food court for a bit. After some good people-watchin’, I finally make my way to my gate, whenever possible using those totally kick-ass moving sidewalks straight out of the Jetsons (obscure reference: It’s like I’m tearing ass around Bush International. Except I’m standing still. Still waters run deep.). Doing double-time at half the effort on those things always reminds me of a dream, one in which you can float or run extra fast or jump super far.
Once on the plane, there comes that crucial and most painful of chores: finding out who’s sitting next to you. Today I got luck. The guy never said a word to me. No that I necessarily have a problem talking to my neighbor, but I always embark on a journey with great literary ambitions—both creative and consumptive. The trick is to find that proper balance between a little pleasant banter and being left mostly alone to read my books and write my masterpieces. And I always prefer to err on the side of anonymity.
Such a random mass of people also provides, of course, the chance for romance. Just today, at my gate, I saw an aging buck, graying at his tips yet still with a musk about him, running some solid game on a just-past-her-prime doe who’s perhaps seen a little too much sun in her day. Then again, if it is the impersonality of an airport that promises mystery and excitement, it comes at the price of anonymity and a lack of accountability. Was their giggly chat a budding fairy tale, as in Alain de Boton’s book On Love, or a fuck and run straight out of Penthouse Forum (or, I dunno, one of my parties)? Of course, 99 times out of 100, the answer is neither, and we single people all find our seats next to J. Random middle-aged person a little sheepishly, having actually allowed ourselves even a dip into this foolish fantasy.
Oh shit, while I was typing we soared right over California and are now crossing the Pacific Ocean. Looking out my window: Yep, it’s blue. I could for a drink and a pee right now. I may have to wake up the sleeping scripture scholar in a bit.
This marks the first time I’ve ever left the continental United States. I tried to pack appropriately for such a trip. I brought an old, faithful friend, E. B. White; a little hot sizzle: Mark Twain’s vitriolic writing on “the damned human race”; an epic storyteller telling his epic story, T. E. Lawrence and his Seven Pillars of Wisdom; and someone I’ve been meaning to make amends with for quite some time, V. S. Naipaul. But on my uncle’s bookshelf in Houston I came across a collection of Roger Angell’s essays on baseball. I decided that this was a vacation, so I had postpone Naipaul and the enigma of his arrival, giving his place in my bag to Angell’s nostalgia. Jumping into the middle of a constructed paradise doesn’t exactly give one the clearest sense of what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. I’ll save that for when I finally move out of Texas. So in the end, I wound up with two elegiac old boys of the New Yorker school (Angell was the son by previous marriage of White’s wife, Katherine Angell, if memory serves correctly) and one curmudgeon to keep my perspective in its proper balance. We’ll see if Lawrence of Arabia and his tales of the desert ever make it out of my suitcase. I might stick to just the red dirt of the baseball diamond this trip.
posted by Matt at 12:39 AM
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