Wednesday the 31st, 2004: Galvin Sells Out, Part XXVIII

Hey look, kindofcrap is featured in this month's JapanZine. If you happen to be in Japan and near a major bookstore, be sure to pick up a copy! It doesn't benefit me in any direct way, but I figure, if the JapanZine's sales pick up significantly this month, then it's only reasonable for the editors to assume that it's entirely due to MY influence. At least, that's what I'd figure. Anyway, do your part and my bidding by picking up a copy, or at least going to the site, and help stroke my ever-expanding metaphorical Internet Penis (tm) to even grander, veinier heights.

On a side note, I should point out that I had an idea for an expansive, site-wide April Fool's Day joke brewing for tomorrow, but my site is too much of a pain in the ass to update while on the road so fuck that. But maybe you can just imagine to yourself how funny it would have potentially been, and be satisfied with that. Yeah, you'da really laughed; wouldn't that have theoretically been hysterical? Har!

Monday the 29th, 2004: Kindofcrap: Hawaiian Style

My oldest brother Garrick just got married this weekend. And although I suppose he and his bride did their fair share, I'd like to just go ahead and credit myself for giving the wedding that special 'cheesy sitcom reunion' feel by returning from Japan to attend it. You could probably tell that I've always felt that my being in Japan automatically made my life into some grand adventure, making me a lead character worthy of a few seasons at least of quality television programming. However, looking at it against the bigger picture of my six-person-family as a whole, I come off more as the bratty child star who asked for too much money to return for subsequent seasons and thus was abruptly written off the show as 'going to Japan' and then replaced by a dog or a baby or something. I mean personally, I've always thought of my household as reasonably similar to a show like Just the Ten of Us, except with more egg rolls. This whole wedding dealie, then, I imagine as either a May sweeps week ratings stunt or the aforementioned 'Very Brady Wedding' that enables me swallow my pride and look like I'm making a brief return to my roots out of nostalgia and respect rather than a failed career in off-Broadway theater. This whole analogy is probably making sense to very few people other than me; but is it at least obvious that I watched way too much TV as a child?

At any rate, the point is, having one of my brothers getting married is just plain WEIRD for me, seeing as I've only just recently reached the age where I can finally stop saying "marraige" in the same hushed tones usually reserved for sentences like "Hi, I'm a midget Wiccan with hemorrhoids". I'm just grateful that all my friends are sexually inept enough that their up and marrying off has never been much of a concern. But then my lousy brother has to go and stab me in the back what with his selfish, thoughtless, self-centered, 'marrying the woman he loves' horsecrap. Such betrayal, from my own family even. Now just two brothers to go and soon people'll start asking me when I'm getting married, which of course is a whole line of forced, uncomfortable conversation I'm very much looking forward to. See, it's not as if I have a fear of commitment. I mean, it's not like I was ever King Pussy -- at least not in that manly, girl-fucking sense, as opposed to the girly, girlish sense -- but enough that I like to think it's outta my system; leaving me now ready to just meet a nice girl with whom I can hold a decent, adult conversation, and then, perhaps if things go well, several minutes down the road, pay my $20 so she'll go away and leave me alone.

Okay, so maybe I do have a problem with commitment; is that so unusual? Okay, maybe with my particular level of blood-curdling fear, it is. See, these days, I'll maybe meet a nice girl at a bar or something, but if she so much as bats an errant eyelash in my direction I'll start thinking things like Aw geez, now I guess I'll probably sleep with you or something, and that'll make you wanna do things together and hang out and shit and thus will subsequently fart or French-kiss the next man to walk by, anything, simply to escape my perceived potential future timeline of horrifying commitment. See, Galvie kinda likes where his life is right now, and the last thing he needs is some skirt waltzin' in all lah-dee-dah and messin' up his tidy little world what with her flowers and scented shampoos in MY BATHROOM and the...y'know what, this is probably a whole 'nother topic for a different time.

I digress, yes. Anyway, the actual ceremony itself, was rather nice I thought. I don't have much experience with these things, but I would say you could call it the "beautiful ceremony" you always hear about on TV (which is of course my only reference point). The minister arrived in a kilt, having just come from playing the bagpipes at a funeral, but sadly did not perform my brother's wedding while wearing it. Yours truly was one of the groomsmen; who, after a few initial seating mishaps, managed to perform his duties as usher quite adequately once it clicked that, due to the racial makeup of the bride and groom, all the white people went on the left and all the Chinese people should sit on the right, like some kind of fucked-up sliced-in-half Twinkie.

But I suppose if I had to describe my brother's wedding in two words, they would probably be "Mario Kart" seeing as that's more or less all me and my brothers did on this, perhaps the most important weekend of Garrick's life. My brothers are rather accomplished trash-talkers and pulled no punches even on this occasion, as there was no hesitation in rubbing it into Garrick's face that he "had just lost the last video-game race of his single life". I myself find it rather comical that, because of his being sequestered in the house due to the no-seeing-the-bride-before-the-ceremony rule, I was bashing him with colored turtle shells in a virtual cartoon ice-world called 'Sherbert Land' not twenty minutes before he walked down the aisle. His only regret, of course, was that he had not hooked up the GameCube in the actual wedding hall, so he could have played all the way up to the first few notes of the Wedding March. Well, that and his then-wife-to-be noticing that he had slipped the line "and Uma Thurman as The Bride" onto the programs before he got a chance to print them. If you couldn't tell, my brother is quite a man, and my personal hero if not now all of yours.

And I've been looking for a way to say this without completely destroying the general tone I go for in this journal, but well, I really was very happy to see my brother marry his longtime girlfriend Leigh Ann. In all the years I've known her she's never been anything but nice to me, and I'm rather happy to welcome her into the family. Plus, I mean, she let Garrick play Mario Kart on his wedding night. I mean, seriously, if all you skirts out there could only be so patient, I wouldn't have commitment troubles nothin', I tell you what.

Deep emotions...still too troubling and rhythm-breaking...um...butt! Cock! There we go.

Oh, and lastly, what story of matrimonial bliss would be complete without a component of Galvin-humilation? See, Leigh Ann, in an admirably progressive move, chose her younger brother John as one of her bridesmaids, a "BridesMAN", if you will. Which, if you ask me, is a pretty cool thing to do; throwing off one of the many unnecessarily stodgy elements of this particular institution. However, the problem presented itself immediately after the wedding, as the wedding party proceeded out of the building, one by one. First, Garrick and Leigh Ann walked down the aisle and out the door together, bathed in the glow of flash bulbs and tearful smiles. Then my brother Greg, the Best Man, walked with the Maid of Honor on his arm. Sometime, then, right after my brother Geoff started down the aisle with one of the bridesmaids, did the crowd gradually begin to realize the only two members of the wedding party remaining at the altar waiting to march were, of course, myself, and my apparent life-partner, the stocky, bearded, matching-tuxedo-wearing BridesMAN. In lieu of offering him my arm we compromised with an appropriately masculine handshake; I like to think we handled the situation admirably even as we absorbed the echoing laughter of the entire audience. Still, though, I couldn't help but look briefly towards the skies and wonder if it was really necessary for God to go ahead and humiliate and emasculate me even when I had been so kind as to come to in His very own home.

Either way, an appropriate way for any special occasion to end, I think: with people pointing and laughing at me. Hey, sitcom wedding; what'd I tell ya?

Thursday the 25th, 2004: Catching Flies with Forks

Presenting...

Oh my God, you guys. I've only been in America for less than a week now but already there's so very many interesting things to talk about. For instance, you know how back in Japan everyone is so hard-working and industrious? Well over here, everyone is really lazy and unmotivated with a lax, ungrateful attitude towards employment instead. It's true, because this one guy I work with is that way. But really, it's the little differences that make living in your native country so interesting. Like, did you know that you can go into people's houses here and not even have to take off your shoes? And instead of yen Americans use "dollars" for money. Also -- and you won't believe this -- instead of everyone eating sushi all the time, Americans all eat something called ham "burgers". Oh, living in a native country is all so fascinating! Now, let me tell you about further minute observations I have made that shall springboard into vast, sweeping generalizations about this country and its people!

...okay, I think I got all that self-parody urge out of my system now. Real entry next time, I swear.

Monday the 22nd, 2004: Galvin's America Journal

Well um, I'm back home in America. Yup. Uh-huh. Yup. Definitely back home. Uh-huh. Yup.

...

....

.....

...oh, fuck this. I'm going to Arby's.

Saturday the 20th, 2004: Leaving on a JET Plane (ha!)

In a little over an hour I shall be hopping on a train to the airport, where I will in turn hop on a plane that, in just 12.5 excrutiating, hellish hours, will take me back to the States, where home is but a mere 3-hour car ride through famously awful New York traffic and apparently 8 inches of unseasonal snow away. Interestingly enough my plane leaves Tokyo at 12 PM, yet arrives in New York at 10 AM the same day, thus allowing me to imagine I am making my trip on some wonderful magic time machine. This, of course, counts as the only positive part of the trip, as generally I abhor airline travel, particularly 12-hour flights across the world. I mean, here I could launch into a diatribe about what is the deal with airline food and how awful it is and how I hate it, and you'd think I was just mining cheap, easy comedy; but honestly, I HATE it. Even the smell alone seriously makes me want to vomit. I'm not quite rude enough to just flat-out refuse the tray when the flight attendant brings it by, but seriously, I usually order coffee just so I can stick my nose into the cup and have some uncontaminated air to breathe. I get some weird looks, but SCREW YOU, Were it socially acceptable, I'd just cut a string of perpetual farts throughout the half-day flight (since to a guy, one's own farts always smell like roses), but as it stands, coffee is the only way to go. Well, that and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I've packed in protest. Hey, do what you gotta do to survive, even if it makes you look like a complete child, that's my motto.

Anyway, as things stand, I'd sooner petition a group of burly men to play pocket pool on my ass than take any trip home that I felt wasn't completely necessary. But, seeing as I've got what I would deem a pretty good reason this time (brother's getting married), I'd say I can handle it this time. Don't get me wrong, I am very, very much looking forward to going home, it's just that I'm the kinda guy who usually only gets excited about stuff after it's right within reach. And, as you probably guessed, a 4 hour train ride plus a 12 hour flight do not yet qualify as 'in reach'. Sometime around hour 10, that's perhaps when I'll start to get excited. Of course by then, insanity will have induced me to claw off my own face and those of the passengers within a 3-seat radius around me, but at that point, I'll be so close to home that very little can get me down. To be honest, if I weren't going home, I wouldn't really wish I was going home at all. But now that I know I am, nothing in the world could stop me from getting there. After all, it's home. And y'know, my precious Arby's.

Okay, I oughta be making breakfast now. Anyhoo, since it doesn't seem like my last vacation was so long ago, and this vacation is rather on the long side (3 weeks) I'll trip undating sporadically at home, so you can see just how (even more) slothful and pathetic my home life is. Plus, kindofcrap and Japanzine have somewhat reconciled, as I will be getting a blurb in this month's issue along with a bunch of other Japan sites; so I mean, I gotta put something up, right? Sure, it'll be tediously boring. But really, what is this whole internet journal thing about, if not trying to make people care about the mind-numbingly dull?

Tuesday the 16th, 2004: The Whore Corps

Took a trip down to the local 100 yen shop the other day, and spotted the following dolls; which, as many things do, enraged me to no end:

Uh, not that I often go looking for dolls

I know I have a tendency of making a big deal out of nothing, and often indulge in large, sweeping generalizations by reading way too into things, but I'm sorry: these innocent-looking dolls go a long way in explaining the state of gender equality in Japan today. Don't believe me? Fine. But let's examine the three outfits available for this doll a little more closely.

First one on the left is a bland, harmless homemaker's outfit. No, I've no problems with homemakers. I mean, if I were a woman, which of course is a subject I spend a lot of time thinking about in between attempts to turn a certain part of my anatomy inside out, I like to think that I would find no greater joy than in putting on my cute little checkered apron and baking my man one FUCK of a cake. I mean, as a woman, the only ways I can truly express myself is through constructing delicious pastries and varying the speed and ferocity with which I give my man his twice-daily blowjob, right? Right! So no, now that I think about it, I've no particular problem with this first costume, other than the fact that it appears to come with a pair of socks, which is puzzling, since everyone knows the bitch oughta be barefoot when cleaning my dishes.

In the middle, then, we have the standard Japanese schoolgirl outfit. Which of course, would be all cute and innocent, were it not for the fact that putting one's daughter in the standard Japanese schoolgirl outfit means you may as well save some time and leave a bent coat hanger in her crotch that is not to be taken out until sometime after menopause. I mean Jesus Christ, look at it, three-inch checkered skirt, cute little sailor's bow; it's a complete fetishist's outfit, and chances are I don't need to explain that to you. And yet, this is what Japanese girls are forced to wear through the entirety of their formative years, no matter how cold it gets, and no matter how many groping perverts there are on the train. It's no wonder so many dirty old men here salivate over junior high school girls like a homeless man over a freshly-roasted ham. Did you know that 85% of straight Japanese males prefer girls who are 15 and under? Okay, so I just made that up. But now it's on the internet, which as everyone knows, automatically makes it true.

Which brings us to our third and last outfit, the most appalling of the bunch. Okay, so admittedly, I was purposely going over the top for the first two outfits, but really, look at this last outfit: red vinyl jacket, red vinyl miniskirt, red vinyl knee-high boots. Uh-huh. Yes. *deep breath* PLEASE TRY TO TELL ME THAT OUTFIT COULD BELONG TO TO ANYONE ELSE BESIDES A WHORE. I mean, seriously, you can't see it, but the label on the package actually reads, "Red Vinyl"; what else could they possibly rationalize this outfit as being? Don't see too many nuns walking around dressed head-to-toe in red vinyl, do you? Nope. Politicians? Nope. Opera singers? Nope. Leaders of powerful multinational corporations? Nope. School teachers? Nope, but now that I think about it, that'd be kinda hot. Regardless. The point is, JAPAN IS TRAINING ITS FEMALES TO BE PROFESSIONAL SEX WORKERS FROM A YOUNG AGE AND THIS IS THE PROOF AAAAAAARRRGGH.

...okay, I've calmed down. Seriously, though. If, God forbid, I ever have a daughter, I would sooner raise her by dangling her from a chain over a pit of specially-trained jumping crocodiles than let her within three thousand miles of this country.

Monday the 15th, 2004: TETSUOOOOOOOO

One of us here doesn't have to teach again for nearly a month now, motherfucker; lemme give you a hint: he's awesome. Oh man, I'm so happy right now I could loudly crap my pants in front of a gathering of every woman I've ever been attracted to and I'd view it as a semi-joyous occasion. Now, my friends, it is time to do the Dance of Joy; which is similar to Balky's except involving beer and wholly optional pants.

Anyway, before I get to go on actual vacation, I have to face down a full week of office days first. Not my ideal situation, but well, like I could say in just about any situation up to and including having my legs digested by a bear, at least it's better than teaching. I mean, don't get me wrong, I generally love office days, but having a work day full of absolutely nothing to do kinda loses its charm when you have four of them in a row right before you get to go home. Ah well, it won't be so bad: I can occupy myself with many things in the office. For instance, I can check my e-mail 18 times an hour, I can post on my message board, I can search for web pages that don't automatically activate a pop-up display full of boobies. Actually, now that I think about it, that's pretty much all I can do for the entire eight hours. Oh, man. I'm not gonna make it.

I changed my mind. In the course of the last two paragraphs my attitude has completely flipped -- let me go home! Let me go home, now! I don't want to sit in the office for eight hours a day as my supervisor, who by the way is in the process of making up my schedule for the last four months, slowly grows more and more bitter towards me due to my lack of things to do! Man, even my newspaper betrayed me today. I usually depend on it as an all-English escape from the endless bombardment of insanity that is Japan, but do you know what one of the lead stories today was? An article about a freakin' Anime Expo that took place in Tokyo. The article is one of those uninformed fluff pieces about how anime is becoming 'mainstream' in America, completely ignoring the fact that it's only becoming mainstream almost exclusively among COMPLETE NERDS. It also talks about a course on anime offered at the University at Texas that, quote, "has a maximum enrollment of 70 and constantly has to turn away eager students". ALL OF WHOM ARE VIRGINS. Let's take a look at an excerpt from the article:

"I remember a really exciting discussion about romantic comedies such as 'Aa Megamisama,' 'Tenchi Muyo' and 'Video Girl Ai,' Napier said. "Some of the female students accused the male students of preferring submissive, meek women, and the male students countered by saying, 'What's wrong with wanting someone to love you and care for you?' We never came to a final consensus, but I think both sides learned something. Which is of course that we are all LOSERS."

Okay, so I added that last part; sue me. Some may call this harsh, baseless stereotyping, but I'm sorry, just from reading this article I can tell you with absolute confidence that every single person in that 70-student class smells like Cheetos and is FAT. How come these freaks get to breeze through an easy course where the homework consists of watching Season 1 of Nanodimensional Schoolgirl Rape Adventure while I at least had to take semi-legitimate classes like Historical Perspective on Microbiology and World of Computing: Introduction to the 'Enter' Key!? And the fact that it's presented in my paper as a direction academia should be moving in? ARRGH. Jesus, not since my own hometown paper's extensive coverage of the annual Marbles (or "Mibs") tournament have I been so annoyed at a piece of newsprint. I look for salvation and instead I get a big honkin' picture of some chick dressed as Chun-Li staring back at me. Man, even my English-language newspaper can't stop being so freakin' Japanese.

Wednesday the 10th, 2004: Balls, More Balls

It's the last week of actual work (followed by a week of office days) before I get to go on vacation again, so time seems to be moving especially slow lately. Every single class is even more dreadful than usual. If classes during normal, non-right-before-vacation weeks are say, any horrific act of torture you can imagine, then classes during this last final stretch before break are the same acts of torture, except you are also on fire and your genitalia are being chewed on by a swarm of ants. Unless of course you were already thinking of fire as your chosen act of torture. Then I suppose you people would be on, like, double fire, or something. Whatever, you get that it sucks, right?

Anyway, loopholes in my analogies or no, the only thing that is really keeping my already fragile little brain together is that two of the five work days this week have me at the special school. Strange how a school that serves as asylum for dozens of brain-damaged young children serves as my last remaining haven of sanity, but there you have it. This week, it's doing double-time.

Just in case any of you are at a job that you hate while you are reading this, allow me to rub this in: I spent almost a good fourth of my workday in a hammock. Granted, two autistic third graders were laying on top of me for most of that and using the fingers that had just spent an extended period of time in their own mouths to touch my face besides, but this is the price one pays for luxury. The only thing I did today that even remotely resembled 'work' is when the students were individually scheduled to take intelligence tests one at a time. The task that then fell to me was to stay with the remaining children in the 'play room' and well, kill time. And considering killing time is pretty much all I do, I like to think I've gotten rather good at it.

Let me tell ou about the play room at the special school: it's filled with pretty much every fun playground device you can think of. It's got a jungle gym, a see-saw, monkey bars, a slide, a great big trampoline, a giant fluffy mat one can do headers into all day long without ever severing a vertebrae...in short, it must seem almost unfair to a child at a normal school. I mean, the special kids already spend pretty much every day of their lives in some kind of fantasy wonder-camp, and yet they still get all that cool stuff to play with. Meanwhile, a normal kid, based solely on the bad luck of not being disabled, has to go to normal school, where pretty much all the play equipment they're alloted is, and I'm serious here, a shitload of unicycles.

Tangent -- I'm not sure why, but pretty much every school I go to, plus many of my friends', is stocked with a virtual armada of unicycles, which I'm sure are quite useful in teaching young children the value of spending way too much time learning how to do completely stupid things. Now, far be it from me to knock the many practical applications that come with complete mastery of the unicycle, but I'm sorry, Japanese elementary schools pick one thing they'd really like their students to master and it's the fucking unicycle? That just figures. Short of purposely encouraging the children to renounce their studies in favor of a more Circus-friendly lifestyle I can't imagine how a decision like this was ever reached. Trying to learn how to get around on a unicycle is like purposely giving yourself a brain hemorrhage right before solving a math problem. It's like, yeah, great; while you were busy making a mundane task unnecessarily difficult, I've been over here, not being retarded.

But I digress. The point is, the play room at the special school is probably enough to make normal children almost wish they were retarded, so instead of jacking off trying to get around on the least possible number of wheels, they could be playing with all the equipment I listed above; plus, Chuck-E-Cheese be praised, a BALL PIT. But my, there are so many things one can do with a plastic ball pit when the only adult supervision around is YOU. For instance, you can huck plastic balls at retarded children, or you can toss retarded children into the ball pit, or you can...actually, I guess that's pretty much all I did with it, but I'm sure the list goes on. Oh, also, you can record short movies of yourself diving head-first into balls (wouldn't be the first time, har!) shortly before having to wrestle your digital camera away from a fat kid. But of course, that's neither here nor there.

Of course, on a final note, I'd just like to say that while this is something of a first for me, the quality of Terry McMahon's life is improved by balls on a regular basis. Zing!

Saturday the 6th, 2004: 'Oh Boy, Sleep! That's Where I'm...'

Ugh. I'd just like to point out that it's fucking four in the fucking morning right now. A teacher took me out for a sushi dinner last night and rather predictably I ended up getting drunk off a total of one beer and thus fell asleep at like eight o'clock when I came home. The plan, at the time, was to sleep straight through till say, noon, thereby catching up on the all the sleep I've been missing lately; but thanks to having this weird, vaguely homoerotic dream about Vikings that found me stranded on this boat filled with dozens of muscular, oiled-up men wearing nothing but furry shorts and horned helmets, here I am at 4 AM on my fucking computer quite unable to get back to sleep. And let me tell you, by all accounts, waking up at not only an obscenely early hour but doing so only to immediately question your sexuality is probably one of the worst possible ways to start one's day short of waking up in a coffin filled with tarantulas.

I haven't been sleeping well lately at all, now that I think about it. Dreams are supposed to be psychological respite, a sort of automatic maitenance for the subconscious, but recently all mine are not much more than a haven for the disturbing. Questionably meaningful Viking Dream possibly notwithstanding, nearly every dream I've been having for the past few weeks or so has been a bad one. Personally, I think my brain might be doing this intentionally, to make it that much easier to want to wake up and go to work in the mornings, and it is helpful in that respect, but that doesn't mean it's much fun when I'm having them. For a while I thought it might be my admittedly-awful habit of eating an entire pizza immediately before bedtime, but even after I cut that out, the dreams remain. And while it is definitely nothing to be terribly concerned about, it is still something I can't help reflecting on when I wake up, once again, at four in the fucking morning after that goddamn Viking dream.

The funny thing is, mixed in with all your standard bad-dream scenarios about horror-movie situations and the like, I still have my host of reoccuring nightmares occasionally popping up to keep things interesting. Now, analyzing my dreams in my hurrr hurrr where's my athsma inhaler web journal is something of a new, geeky low for me, but it's not as if the meaning of these particular dreams is at all hard to discern, so bear with me:

Ahem. "In my entire life, there's only three reoccuring dreams that I can remember, with a fourth added only recently. Let me list them here, and see if you, too, can play armchair internet psychologist":

Galvin's Top Four Reoccuring Nightmares
#1: Back in High School Marching Band
#2: Back in College with a Ton of Work to Do
#3: A Giant Monster Made of Cheese Wearing a Chef's Hat Chases Me But I'm Really Fat and Can't Run
#4: I'm in JET.

Okay. #1 is easy, since marching band was a fucking awful experience and the epitome of staying with something I hated simply since I'd been doing it so long. #2 is somewhat surprising backlash for all my awful procrastination habits finally catching up to me. And # 3, uh, I hate cheese? And uh, fat people? Okay, so that one's a bit of a mystery but I swear to God it's in rotation along with the others; even if not as frequent.

Now, here I should point out that I only started having these first three dreams well after the situations they depict were out of my actual life. Which is to say that the high school dream I only started having in college, the college one only after I graduated and got a job, and the Cheese Monster one...uh, okay, so that one didn't actually ever happen in real life, at least not that I can remember; but then again who knows what my twice-weekly Hypnotic Therapist might have repressed.

Anyway, the point is, with all of the above dreams, they only started way after they would be relevant, so I can just wake up from them and be like "Whew! I guess it was only a dream!" Whereas with #4, the latest one, I wake up and still say the same thing, only I then look out my window and see Mt. Fuji, or say, a school of Ninjas backflipping across it, causing me to sit up and scream OR WAS IT. Yes, someone, JET is apparently awful enough to have bypassed my sophisticated Reoccuring Bad-Dream Time-Delay Filter to be the only nightmare I have that is actually the life I am still leading right now. Granted, sometimes the JET nightmares have certain alternations to reality, like the one where I'm a seven-foot-tall woman in JET, or the one where I'm Jesus and in JET but my mystical GodPowers aren't working, or the one where JET is a hamburger, but it's eating me! Still though, it's not a very nice thing to wake up from a awful dream only to realize 'Oh wait, no, that's just my actual life.' The funny thing is, work has actually been pretty good lately. I just think it's hilarious that JET is apparently nightmarish enough overall to be added to my repeating-nightmare repertoire so quickly.

Fuck this. Not-so-vaguely Homoerotic Viking Dream be damned; I'm going back to bed. After all, being trapped on a boat full of half-naked Vikings rubbing baby oil on each other is nothing compared to the horrors of JET.

Tuesday the 2nd, 2004: Do You Believe in Runny Anal Discharge (And I Hope You Do!)

Something that differentiates Japanese McDonald's from their Western counterpart, besides employees that don't make it look like a tub of fat fell into God's human-making machine and then exploded, is the fact that all white people are forced to enter, leave, and make their orders at completely separate doors and counters from Japanese customers. Wait, I'm sorry, that's a grossly untrue fabrication. What I meant to say is, what really separates Japanese McDonald's from American ones, is the special "monthly sandwich" that, you guessed it, are creations that are only available 30 days at a time.

Back when I lived in Tokyo, the first time I encountered these special limited-time sandwiches was when they were offering something called a "Salmon Mac," which, while pretty much exactly what it sounds like, was actually quite a bit better than what it sounds like. A reasonable fascimile of pinkish salmon meat peppered by well, big, satisfying hunks of black pepper ("My plan...is going exactly according to...uh...plan!"), and filled with all the tastiest artificial fishy juices this side of a (artificial?) preteen vagina, the Salmon Mac was a rare slice of gastric Heaven in a giant freaky pie that is 98% otherwise composed of the pure 'whatever leftover rat meat we couldn't just staple back together' regular McDonald's Crap-Hell menu. Crap-Hell, of course, being much worse than regular Hell (as well as regular Crap).

On a side note, I should mention that the only way I would eat at McDonald's back in the States is if my necrophiliac date decided to treat me to a cheap meal before he got down to raping me up my cold, decaying, long-dead ass. But hey, in Japan, heading down to those Golden Arches is like going on a short, greasy, vaguely nauseous trip home. And this country has certainly made me done weirder things.

Anyway, while the Salmon Mac is good enough to make my stomach want to masturbate, pretty much every other entry in the Japanese McDonald's monthly menu is, rather predictably, roughly equivalent to taking what would eventually end up in your Halloween candy bag if you went Trick-or-Treating at enough shady back-alley abortion clinics and putting it on a bun. Last month's sandwich was a vaguely sickening attempt that saw stringy mozarella cheese jammed inside a chalky chicken patty -- made all the worse by an irritating ad campaign whose slogan was, and I quote, "WOOOOOOOOOWWWW!!!"; which seems to suggest that we've spent our entire miserable lives waiting for someone to get the idea to stuff molten cheese into a dead alleged 'bird'. Y'know, I thought it was only America that thought everything can be improved by finding someplace to stick cheese in it.

Actually, the mozarella chicken thing is really one of McDonald's better efforts; at least it's made up of original components. Personally, and I have indeed spent way too much time analyzing this, I think the true fall of the McDonald's monthly sandwich program came when they appeared to figure that they could cut corners in making these special offerings just by configuring their usual ingredients in new combinations, instead of going to the trouble of actually ordering new foodstuffs such as the pinkish fishy patty in my beloved Salmon Mac. The worst part of this scrimping, miserly attitude, was surprisingly, not the actual food; but rather the blatantly low estimation of the customer's intelligence in assuming we would jump for joy at offerings like the "Mac Sausage Burger," whose creation required all the effort of chucking a McDonald's breakfast sausage onto a regular bun instead of a biscuit. In case you were wondering, the latest in this line of somewhat underwhelming offerings is none other than the 'Egg Mac'. Behold!

Oh wait, that actually looks kinda half-decent in the ad; even though again, I resent the ad's implication that an Egg McMuffin egg laying on top of two hamburger patties is a natural, tantalizing combination. But you know, ads always make crappy products look good. That's what they do. So let's take a look at the actual sandwich, shall we?

Um, yes. I challenge you to tell me I'm wrong, but -- if this sandwich were to be a sound effect, could it be anything other than 'BLORCH'?

...I mean, uh...Mmm-MMMM! Yummy! But my, does that look tasty! I can hardly wait to wrap my achingly longing lips around this mouth-watering, technically edible crime against humanity! In other news, the fact that this sandwich even exists indicates that Jesus died for NOTHING. Seriously, the only way I would eat this sandwich is if Dennis Hopper strapped a bomb to my anus that was set to explode if for whatever reason shit stopped spurting out of it at a speed less than 50 miles an hour.

Don't for even for a second, by the way, assume that the ordering of this sandwich is my cross to bear. No, that dubious honor belongs to Filipino Mark over at The Shout OUT. He said he'd leave the window open for the car ride home afterwards, but I hardly think this negates the fact that I had to sit directly behind him after he ate what was essentially a giant methane pill. Oh well. I guess if there was ever to be an officially licensed kindofcrap.com hamburger, it probably wouldn't be all too different from this.

*sigh*...where are you, Salmon Mac. Where are you.