Travelogue

Have I told you that I went to Japan for a little bit earlier this year? Cause I did. It was amazing. While I was there, I sent a travelogue of sorts back to friends and family here in the US just about every day. I still have all of these, and I thought I should share them with you. The thing is, they're thirty-something pages altogether, and that is too much to go on here. So I just thought I should direct your attention to "Twelve Days of the Rising Sun," where you can read all of the chronicles. I'll warn you now that they're all very long and were almost never proofread at all. At all. I'm serious. In addition, until I get a ton of free time to post all of the photos referred to in the letters (or decide to actually use the time, more accurately), you'll have to hold your horses on the visuals. Anyway, it's bad writing and all, but if you're interested in what the trip was like, the blow-by-blow in all of its long-winded glory can be found at http://kentosaninjapan.blogspot.com. It could bore you, so read at your own risk.

Night Life

Boy, is it ever. I'm a pretty curious, exploratory kind of person. I like to go and find out about things I didn't know about before, try things I know I'm not good at (yet), see things I haven't seen, etc., etc. This is a good thing, I believe, but it can rear its ugly side from time to time in the form of restlessness when I should really just be settling down. I have determined, though, that if I ever start having complaints about the job I have now, I am nothing short of the world's biggest ingrate. I won't bore you/make you jealous with all the details, but here's a basic rundown:
I am a university instructor teaching basic composition. I have incredibly fun and highly capable students, a course that interests me, and three sections of the same course, which means a much lighter load when it comes to planning. Everything is going well with my students and the actual class periods. And here's the kicker, the point of all of this, and how it ties in to my fortune cookie: in my incredibly light work hours, I don't begin until 2:45 in the afternoon, and I'm done by 7 PM. (I know you all hate me, and I'm sorry.) Last night is just one of a string of examples of why this schedule works well for me, the guy who's always stayed up late and been at my most productive and enjoyable after sunset.
I went with a couple of my students and a few of their friends to Buffalo Wild Wings last night a little after 7. Somewhere between our server Gina and the kitchen, our food took basically forever to get to us. She was really nice, attentive with the drinks, etc., and I don't know exactly what the deal was, because she seemed more or less on the ball. Anyway, in the long wait time we had, we were playing the trivia game on the little Playmaker you can get there. If you've been, you know what I'm talking about. (If you haven't, shame on you, because Buffalo Wild Wings is awesome.) One of the questions was "What was Elvis Costello's first certified platinum-selling record?" The answer, of course, is My Aim is True, which I answered before the choices even showed up. I warned them not to sic the music trivia on me. Anyway, I had Elvis Costello stuck in my head for the remainder of the evening, which ended up being ironic later on, and that's why I share the whole trivia part of the tale with you.
After dinner, I headed over to continue my search for a couple of CD's that were recently, um, confiscated in a government operation. This is how I've decided to refer to the recent incidents, since it makes me sound cooler than being the victim of random property theft. I got to Best Buy eight minutes after they closed. Because the night life is not for all people, only those with the right fortune cookie, places like Best Buy can get away with closing at the practically-sunrise time of 9 PM. I went over to Target and managed to find two CD's ('X&Y' and 'Dookie'), but still left without the two I was most interested in replacing ('We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes' and 'Talkie Walkie'). Right as I was looking at a CD of Air Supply's greatest hits (they always catch you at the worst times!), I hear, "Oh my gosh, it's Kent Walter!" My friends Chris Misiano and Brian Shesko and their girlfriends Allison (that's the ironic part I mentioned earlier) and Dayna, respectively, were stocking up on candy before the 10 PM showing of "Batman Begins." Brian heard I was replacing CD's and went through the music section making ridiculous suggestions of what must have been taken. "Oh, here it is. The Kenny Chesney Collection." "La Bouche's greatest hits. It's a shame that's gone." He brought me "Hysteria" by Def Leppard and offered me a rousing version of "Pour Some Sugar On Me" right there in Target's music section, but I told him that that one was, fortunately for me, not in my car when everything went down and was consequently not stolen. It also was not in my house. Or on loan to anyone. Or, in fact, in my possession in any way. So I was doubly fortunate: I didn't have "Hysteria" stolen, and I don't own it either. I can die happy.
After remarking on the lameness of Target's clearance candy section (84 cents is still a little steep for a Wonka bar, given the size of those things, and who wants a collector's tin of Bratz Starstruck Marshmallows, even for two dollars?), we headed over to Movies 10 and took in the awesome spectacle that is "Batman Begins." If you don't think that this is the best super hero movie ever made, you are a ridiculous person. And that's the bottom line. I don't even have time go into it all. Christian Bale went from like six pounds in "The Machinist" to pretty much a beast for this movie, the acting was great, the moral questions and lessons are incredible, the whole storyline is full of great character drama, and if all of that, as well as a thousand other things, didn't make this film ludicrously stacked, it has Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman in it. By now, with the string of incredible films he's done, and this movie on top of it all, Morgan Freeman has become not just a legend but an adjective as well. "Dude, that was so Morgan Freeman." is both a perfectly acceptable sentence and a high compliment. (This is a comandeered idea.) We can more than forgive the guy for the occasional "Dreamcatcher" or "Edison." He's playing Nelson Mandela pretty soon, for crying out loud. The guy deserves a medal. If you haven't seen "Batman Begins" for some reason, complete your humanity by seeing it. You'll be glad you did.
I drifted far from the initial point of this, which was to say that my fortune cookie was pretty darn insightful. The freedom to go see a movie that ends at 12:30 AM on no advance notice is a privilege that not every employed person has. I better not take it for granted. Or I would be an ingrate.
Other, shorter observations: Thrice will soon take over the world, and Coldplay already has. Goldfish still make the world go round. I need seating. More on that one another time.
Take care of yourselves, everyone, leave a message, do something today that will outlast you, and have a great day.

Tires, Thieves, and Tea

European Café has excellent green tea. It makes me wonder what I’m turning into, really, because I never would have described any tea in the world as excellent six months ago. Credit two weeks of inundation on my trip to Tokyo for my change of heart, I guess. That and some reading up on all of the crazy health benefits of this stuff. Antioxidants, etc. If you know me well, you might know that I’m better at avoiding bad-for-you things than I am at going after good-for-you things. I do try to keep healthy, though, and reasonably active, so the health benefits of green tea are a draw for me.
I’m sitting in European Café (with ‘E-Pro’ by Beck playing in the background) because Tim is not at Goodyear until two, which is also the time they’ll be able to pull my car in. Here’s the story.
Some time over Saturday night, someone went into my car, which I am 99% sure was locked, and took some things, one of which was my car kit out of the trunk. You know, the black zippered thing you never actually use. Jumper cables, jack, probably a flare or two, a piece of junk flashlight. All of that stuff. Well, I don’t know if it was just coincidence or whether it was related or what, but on Sunday afternoon, I came out to see that my left rear tire (the stern port, or port stern, or port bow, or whatever it would be; somebody help me out here?) was flat. Yeah. Wack is right. I’d driven to church and back on it that morning, so I’m not sure how slowly it leaked, when it was punctured, etc. But because my jack had been –ahem- jacked (sorry), it was a bit of an ordeal putting on the spare. In the process, my roommate –and I blame nothing but his hulking strength; no hard feelings- sheared one of the bolts right off the, um, round metal thing. Rotor? So one of the lugs had a chunk of bolt in it. I went to Goodyear and got both of these things fixed yesterday. They patched the tire and put on a new bolt, and the manager, Tim, who I know from having served several times at Outback, gave me a good deal on the whole process. Tim is 100% quality. Very good guy.
Fast forward several hours. I went to dinner with a couple of my students after classes yesterday evening, and when I came out, my tire was flat again. To make a long story short, I ended up having a couple of friends help me with a jack after some phone calls, some waiting, and some fortunate turns of events. In the process, we discovered that the two lugs that Goodyear put on with their air ratchet thing were stripped out. So right now, I have three lugs on three of my wheels, instead of four, and hopefully I’ll be able to get the whole thing straightened out without paying any more money. We’ll see. The iPod’s gone, though, as are the CD’s. Boo.
Buffalo Wild Wings opened and is blowing minds left right and center.
I got to tell my students, and myself, “Welcome to October!” It’s such a nice time of the year. Changing leaves, cooler weather, hookups galore, lowest power bills of the year… Glorious. Also tells me that ski season is on the way.
It’s creeping in toward two o’ clock. My tea is now cold. The Beck CD is skipping. I get the message. Take care, and I’ll write to you again soon.

Greetings (and My Dilemma)

I'm sort of torn on this whole thing.
See, I have this distrust of the state of communication in the world right now. Really in the last several years. It all comes down to my faith in the analog medium to represent everything. The friends of mine who know about all of this are very accommodating to me and my ravings.
It comes down to this. Communication -and I mean real, meaningful, authentic communication- was never intended to consist of ones and zeros. I hate what advancement has done to communication. I find it acceptable to spend an hour on the phone with someone who lives ten minutes from me. I send e-mails to people who need encouragement or patience or an apology when I have the opportunity to go barely out of my way and end up across a table from them, sharing a couch, whatever. I converse without the opportunity to reach across from me and make physical contact at the moments when it should punctuate what's being said. Because this is part of who I am, and because I hate it about myself, I am very reluctant to publish on the internet things that are personal to me, things that I feel belong in the context of personal contact.
On the other hand, I can have a deeply affecting encounter with -to give one example- Leo Tolstoy, who's been dead for 95 years this November, and all because I have his words at my disposal, and words mean something. People in literary circles talk about the "death of the author," meaning the disappearance or very infrequent emergence of an author's personality, beliefs, etc. in a literary work. There is no such thing. An author can't hide behind his work without leaving traces of himself any more than I can hide a fish in my closet without the secret eventually coming out. Tolstoy shows up in his fiction, his theological reconstructions, and his polemics against organized religion and hypocrisy. Whether I love him for his warm descriptions of love, cry over his portrayal of grace, or grieve at his incomplete understanding of the gospel, Leo Tolstoy has achieved immortality, and all because words have meaning.
So what does this all have to do with me.blogspot.com? Well, back to my dilemma. So much of me rails against the idea of everything about this. There is no need for all of the weeping emo kids who seek some cathartic purging and release by having the six people who read their Myspace cry with them after the next breakup. It makes me sad to see that people can type instead of apologize. Or forgive. Or change. This is the culture responsible for the death -or at least the thorough maiming- of spelling, grammar, coherence, and the process of putting thought through fingers to words and well-communicated ideas. I hate everything about it.
And yet...
I say I want to publish my writing. I say I want an audience. I want to look back and know that I've left something bigger than myself. And, like it or not, in the same way that royalty gave way to patrons, patrons to merchants, merchants to publishing houses, and then vanity press started taking a larger hold on the market, this whole idea of publishing globally and instantaneously, despite the juvenile results in its juvenile stages, is actually worth my time. I don't care about being famous. But those with an audience have changed the world over and over, and the word is the catalyst. So I can bury it all in the mean time, or I can get it out there before my earth-shattering debut masterwork is in physical book form. :)
I could have just said, "I used to loathe blogs, now I just dislike them and have found the appeal to outweigh the repulsion." It would have been pithier, and, come to think of it, probably better writing, brevity being the soul of wit and all. But when have I failed to waste more of my readers' time than strictly necessary?
Anyway, hi. You can read things here if you want. Leave a message.
Beep.