I felt like seeing a movie on Wednesday night. No matter that I also needed to go look for a new monitor, as mine was done for. I tried to get Maoman and Berta to come over to Warner Village, but they both had plans. That was it, then; I went and bought one ticket to see Minority Report. It was that kind of night.

I enjoyed the film, but several flaws kept me clicking my tongue with the thought of how much better it could have been with a director dedicated to a vision rather than a director dedicated to manipulative entertainment. There were several continuity problems that were just careless, but the biggest flaw was the ending, as others have pointed out. I think it was too bright; a bittersweet ending would have suited the cauldron of emotions created by the story much better; the dessert was too sweet, and it left us confused about what we were being told. I think perhaps shunting the happy-children-in-the-cottage scene a bit earlier and ending on the main character and his wife would have helped, but it wouldn't have solved the problem.

Another glaring problem was with Tom Cruise. He played the character of Officer John Anderton ok, but without convincing depth. I know, who are we talking about here? I'm sure he lined the producers' pockets much better than a better, lesser known actor would have, and that pisses me off for some reason. I suppose I'm not ready for Hollywood Big Time if I still think like that, but I do.

Last night, after meeting with a friend from Eslite Bookstore for publishing advice, I finally embarked on my quest for a new LCD monitor, fully intending to not get home empty-handed. I even forsook my motorcycle in anticipation of lugging the thing home. My first stop was the Nova shopping center, where I found a lot of "we don't have that model but we can get it for you tomorrow" from little shops. Then I went to T-zone, which didn't have much of anything, and then to Tek or whatever the big yellow taxi-signed store is. They had a good selection, but unfortunately they tended to install shiny glass covers on their LCD monitors, resulting in annoying reflections and fingerprints.

Before I knew it it was 9:30 and everything was closed. I was tired and thirsty, and it was hot, so I took the MRT home and had a late dinner at Grandma Nitti's. Petting the large orange cat there, making it happy by rubbing behind its ears, made me feel a bit better. The food wasn't bad, either. I still haven't decided what to do about the monitor thing, though. It's going to cost me a large chunk o' change in any case; I just don't want to get ripped off too badly.

Mindcrime is in town at the moment, along with HG (His Girl) Janice. It's Friday and everyone is at the Company Meeting. I stopped going to Company Meetings after I found out how utterly useless and time-wasting they were. I'd rather sit here and update my blog. Far more interesting, if you ask me. Still, even though it's pretty nice out, I don't feel like it's Friday. Probably the unresolved monitor issue nagging at me. At least I got my motorcycle registration renewed at lunch, which involved a very political conversation with a taxi driver. Luckily we saw eye-to-eye in that respect, although he was a bit scary as far as the intensity of his convictions went.

I was asked recently to be a moderator on the Oriented forums. I respectfully declined, citing my volitile personality and certain tendencies to mock people. Nice of them to ask, though. It just seems to me that being a moderator is one step beyond obsession with that forum, and I don't need to get any closer than I already am to that particular state of being.
etched by at 5:51 PM

I have banished the 'refresh' buttom from my browser menu, owing to its recent treacherous behavior. Hopefully it will spend the time thinking about what it's done, and how it can improve itself, make something useful of itself in the future. This should also send a strong message to the 'home' and 'favorites' buttons concerning what should happen to them if they fail to keep their noses clean.

Lileks wrote about first-person shooters today in a way that echoed many of my thoughts on the subject. I'm getting tired of running around shooting things. Perhaps it's the inevitable mellowness settling over me in my old age, but I wonder what a game would be like if, instead of pouring all of their resources into huge maps and the telemetry of spinning corpses, developers concentrated on a pure and vivid atmosphere, the essence of what made games like Dark Forces and Half-life such fun to play. You might think that it was the shooting bit that did it, but for me it was the feeling of being ensconced inside another world, a place to explore. Unreal was beautiful, but it lacked the atmosphere. In many such games I turn on the god mode just so I don't have to worry about the shooting part, just walking around and enjoying the feeling of being in the place. At the moment I am playing Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast. Recently I made it to a place where you're in a cavernous, darkened cantina, with tinny music playing and a sprinkling of characters sitting around. I would have loved to just sit down at a table and watch what happened, take in the details, etc. But as soon as I began talking to the bartender, the blast doors came crashing down and everyone in the place started shooting at me. Then, after I had killed everyone or run them off, the corpses disappeared, and the place was dead, a collection of interesting polygons.

I know it sounds cheesy, but what if there were a game where there wasn't such a lethal mandate to kill everyone in sight, where one had to make decisions, subtle ones. Programmers would probably tell me that we don't have the technology to do such a thing and do it well, but surely we have attained a level where we can begin thinking about introducing a greater level of complexity into our killing games, at least making us thinking a bit about slaughtering everyone in the room before, or even as we do it.

(There is a Chinese-American woman a couple of cubicles over from my hammering away at the computer at at least 90 words per minute. She's been on there for about half an hour so far. Is it the world's longest email, or have I inadvertantly discovered one of Jody Lin's many hidden posting spots?)

This morning I was offered, quite out of the blue, a tech-writing position out in Neihu for a bit more money than I am making now (not an incredible feat, that). If the idiot residents of that area hadn't kept arguing about what capacity line they wanted for so many years and kept the Muzha Line from continuing up to Neihu, I would probably go for it. As it is it is tempting, but the commute would be problematic and possibly expensive, therefore reducing any financial benefit I gained from it. I also know precisely fuck-all about tech writing, but that doesn't appear to be a problem for most tech writers.

In case you're wondering what's been going on with me in a photographic way lately, here are three new pictures at the Mirror Project, all from the Kymco event downstairs a while back.

In other news, Mayor Ma announced today, no doubt from underneath a very large umbrella, that the drought is over. It feels like the end of a dry spell on several different levels. All of the sudden, with the onset of rainy weather, many different developments and choices are presenting themselves, like insects crawling out of the woodwork: The publisher thing. The film festival. A possible new place to live. Job offers. Little P. A new monitor, a new helmet even.

It never rains...
etched by at 2:30 PM

Do not adjust your monitors. Well, go ahead if it makes you happy, but it won't do any good, since today's entry is in Chinese. Just because I feel like it. Mwahahaha..ha.

Ahem.

今天我想試試看用破爛的中文寫日記. 如果有人看不懂的話, 沒關係, 反正我平常寫的東西也沒甚麼意義, 只是好玩而已. 這次是給同胞們看看我的網路日記裡面的話題有多無聊. 有錯字請見諒. 如果你無法理解我的怪幽默感的話, 請回家問你老爸甚麼叫'幽默'.

早上起床時發現有個小小颱風突然來到我們台灣西岸玩, 所以我就決定座計程車上班, 也同時把它當作持到的藉口, 因為我常常持到, 一定要準備一些可信的,不會被懷疑的好藉口, 例如說; '我本來想今天來去造反, 但來不及去買炸彈和武器, 所以就算了, 還是上班好了...明天再去作亂.'

昨晚把我的'跟斗雲' 機車噴成灰色...這樣才可以順利得躲條子...幹, 忘了我剛剛買的安全帽是滿亮的紅色拉...媽的, 我有時候真的有夠傻. 今天在穿我的'幹好熱' 上衣. 我發覺一般台灣人並不會介意這種圖畫. 若是在國外的話, 可能有一堆人在我背後拿著大字報抗議起來.
etched by at 4:27 PM

I met up with Dean, Shirzi and Gavin at My Other Place, where I had a surprisingly decent Mexican Chicken Wrapper. I say surprisingly because I never really liked the food at My Other Place. Gavin thought it looked so good he ordered one himself and, being the proper Englishman he is, promptly began to stuff the wrapper with chips.

Although the party at the 70's Airport Love Palace was ostensibly an Independence Day Party, there was nary a barbeque nor an explosive device to be found. Instead, entertainment took the form of watching the pet alligator stalk, attack, and consume several mice placed on pieces of styrofoam in the small pool. There had been plans afoot to spray paint the mice red, white and blue, respectively, but clearer minds had prevailed over the idea, since such a display might have been taken the wrong way, especially by the alligator.

I didn't actually watch the consumption of the mice myself, except for taking a few pictures. By that point I had consumed several glasses of the punch, which consisted of several different brands of vodka with a hint of lemonade mix, interspersed with lots of red wine, so I sat languidly in a chair on the balcony and watched the planes take off and land. I could tell what was going on with the alligator and the mice just by listening to the crowd in any case.

After waking up on Saturday afternoon and swearing my customary vow to Never Drink Like That Again, I shook off my hangover and went to pick up my motorcycle, which was parked where I had left it the night before. Since Dean's Yanshui helmet was much too large and probably made from cardboard, I rode down to an accessory shop recommended by Maoman to get a real helmet. Maoman paid NT$16,000 for his several months ago, but I didn't want to pay that kind of money. I picked out a nice red Shoei for NT$7,600, spurning the complicated designs of the more expensive helmets. This, of course, means that I will have to carry my helmet around with me like a foreigner rather than leaving it on my bike like most Taiwanese do, which also means that I will have to stop making fun of foreigners who carry their helmets around with them. Damn, I enjoyed that.

That night was Berta's Birthday Bash. I walked into Mr. Paco's Pizzaria at about 8 to find a long table surrounded by Berta and her friends, mostly Americans but with some Taiwanese present as well. I didn't know many people, or else I had forgotten a lot of people. I'm terrible with names, faces, that sort of thing. The conversations were mostly centered around marriage, families, jobs, etc. The food was excellent, if expensive. At one point I was in the men's part of the unisex bathroom when Berta and her friend came in, ostensibly to adjust her dress, but they soon began to talk about me. Nothing bad, of course, just your normal chit-chat. I waited until Berta had gone into the female stall before I made my exit, but the friend was still there. I noticed that she was an interesting shade of red.

After dinner Berta steered everyone (it was like herding cats, I tell you) over to Oz, a ritzy mimimalist bar with mirrors and a token DJ stand. I could tell immediately that it wasn't my kind of place, so I bade my farewell and walked over to my friend Fish's farewell party at his rooftop apartment on Heping E. Rd. The apartment was gringy and hot, and I was soon sweating copiously. I munched on barbequed corn and chicken sandwiches as I chatted with several of the English teachers who had congregated there. I felt a bit awkward, however, as I don't really belong to that crowd. They were asking me questions about my visa status, questions I didn't feel like answering, but I was too tired to make up my usually elaborate, purely fabricated answers, so I was relieved to get a call from Little P, who had managed to get leave and was in Taipei, at Fresh.

I took a cab over and found Little P on the balcony schmoozing with his friends. I was pretty tired, but he wanted to drink, dance and chat, so I waited around for him, don't ask me why. I guess I kinda like the kid. I sat on the opulant red sofas and watched shirtless couples hug and kiss next to the bar on the second floor until Little P was ready to go. I spent the night at his place. Little P, by the way, is huggalicious. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Sunday was Berta's real birthday, so we met up at United Mix for brunch out on the porch. Afterwards I had a little time before the Casablanca rehearsal, so I went over to the Chungking Mansions place and had a look around, to see it in the daytime. It was quiet, not many people around inside. I discovered a fairly disguesting yet thankfully not well-used wet market in the basement. The stairways were unlit. A group of men, naked to the waist in the summer heat, played Mah-jong in the hallway. Groups of kids ran around, upsetting the sprinkling of cats and the occasional dog in a cage. I asked one of the shop owners on the second floor how old the building, called the Xinwei Market, was. He said it was 30 years old. "How do you know that?" I asked.

"Because I've been here for 30 years," he said, pointing at his barbershop and giving me a strange look.

Rehearsal was fun, as usual. I read the part of Rick, as usual. Parts haven't been decided yet, but I think Rowan has his eye on another guy for Rick. In any case, it's up to him; he's the director. I just enjoy reading Rick. Later I showed Dean around the Xinwei Market building. He agreed that it was an interesting place. "I wouldn't want to raise a kid here, though," he added.

I had just enough time to go home and change before Taijiquan practice. Ok, well, not enough; I was in fact late, and got called on it by the teacher. He punished me by having me lead the class, the first time he's ever done that to me. It was a good workout, though. I walked back to the MRT station listening to music, as I usually do, although this week's program, Strauss, wasn't quite as good as last week's Bach.

And that, friends, pretty much sums up my weekend. Steve, who is back in Taiwan after a lengthy trip around Asia with his wife, met me for lunch today, and we talked about publishing over excellent noodles at Bellini Pasta. I met with the people at Locus this evening, and progress was made. They are drawing up a contract for me to have a look at sometime in the next few days. The terms aren't as good as I had hoped, but they're not unreasonable. Hopefully I will be able to decide on a publisher soon. My computer monitor at home is also becoming increasingly unusable, so I will most likely be forced to spend a large amount of cash on getting a new one.
etched by at 12:59 AM

Why don't browsers include an "unrefresh" button? Has anyone ever thought of this? I mean, DUH! Hello? Yeah, folks, this is what folks at Microsoft get paid 300k a year to sit around and not realize. I say this because, being the stupid ognoramuz I am, I clicked "refresh" instead of "post" just now and a 3,000-word essay on the past four days of my life promptly disappeared into the ether, never to return. Ok, TC, calm down. Breath. Breath. An angry monkey is not an effective monkey...

*to Vampires* CAN YOU PLEASE SHUT OFF THAT FUCKING ICRT CRAP? JESUS! I swear one of these day I'm gonna open up a window on your pasty asses. Eww, I just envisioned that.

Anyway, after experiencing the anguish that is Losing A Post, I decided to take out my frustrations on the collection of plastic water bottles I have accumulated on my desk. I swept them all to the floor and promptly began stomping them flat, jumping up and down on them and filling the office with a truely awesome cacophony. Just then, of course, a large group of Very Important PR People, business types in suits and jewelry, came by. Not knowing what to do, I continued stomping on the plastic bottles. One of the vampires called over to Kit, who sits behind me, and asked if my shennanigans were disturbing his work. Kit, who was downloading a Warcraft add-on for his Mac, shook his head.

Just a minute ago one of our PR people came over and asked if everything was ok. I played innocent and gave her a speech on the importance of recycling plastic water bottles.

etched by at 6:01 PM

Life is strange beyond words

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