The Island is Dead.

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http://raouldukelives.blogspot.com/



RIP

conversation on a bus

“Look at my sticker of a chicken.”
“I think that’s a rooster.”
“Gobble gobble.”
“That’s a turkey, silly.”
“Cock-a-doodle-doo.”
“There, that’s a rooster.”
“Then what’s a chicken? Cluck cluck?”
“Yeah, cluck cluck.”
“What noise do horses make?”
“Neigh neigh.”
“Cows?”
“Moo moo”
“Pigs go oink oink. What else is there?”
“Cats. Meow meow. And dogs. Woof woof.”
“I thought dogs said bow wow.”
“I guess they say that too. But what dog says bow wow? To me they sound more like woof woof.”
“Dogs in Japan say wan wan.”
“And frogs in Japan say gerro gerro.”
“Hahaha. Gerro gerro. Gerro gerro. That’s funny.”
“I hate frogs.”
“Sheep. They go baa baa.”
“Ohh, yeah.”
“Wait! Ruff ruff. Don't dogs go ruff ruff?”
“Yeah, they say that too.“
“Dogs can say a lot.”
“Yes they can.”
“I want a dog.”
“I want a real big dog and a really little dog. I think it would make a good Christmas card.”
“I think it would.”

421am: wake up, look at clock, curse the world
428am: sleep again
545am: awake
552am: still awake
559am: roll around in bed, search for a spot to fall back asleep into
610am: still awake
611am: get up, pee
612am: make tea
613am: check email and messages
620am: poop, stare at same page of magazine yet again.
630am: update microsoft office, turn off alarm #1
644am: have shower
655am: dress
7am: turn off alarm #2 and smoke a cigarette on balcony
725am: make toast and put on socks.
727am: update macbook software
730am: eat toast with strawberry jam
732am: install OSx security update
740am: write this bizarre list.
746am: brush teeth
748am: leave apartment.

i don't buy watermelon

this is a suika. we call it a watermelon in english.

i took this photo with my cell phone while i was at the store earlier today.

that number, 2980, is the price of the watermelon in my local grocery store.

2980 yen.

right now, 2980 japanese yen are worth 29 US dollars.

$29!

I love watermelon, but I don't love it for 29 dollars.

I don't even think I'd love it for 10 dollars.

Guess I'll keep eating bananas.

the plants are dying. don't know what to do.

thought this would be easy:

i provide water & sunlight,
the plants photosynthesize.

we are happy. nothing dies.

must be dreaming.

all things die.

file under: random saturday.

If you ever get thrown into the back of a police car, Japan is the best place for it to happen.

I was sitting in the police station explaining to them how everything went down, filling out forms, giving fingerprints and what have you.

“We need to go to the scene of the crime.”

“Okay.”

“Did you walk here?”

“Uh, yeah. No bike. Remember?”

“Ahh, yes. Right, then. Let’s go. We’ll drive you.”


This is the second time somebody has stolen my bicycle in Japan. Both times the bike was not locked.

Perhaps I bring these things upon myself.

I came home from work Friday afternoon to find that my bicycle was no longer standing in the bike rack next to my building. I rode it home the night before and walked to work the following morning. Sometime in between returning Thursday night and getting off work Friday afternoon the bike was taken.

So I went to the police on Saturday to report the bike as stolen.

The police took me quite seriously.

They had three men on the case asking serious questions.

“What color was the bike? In centimeters, how tall is it? How many gears? What color was the seat?”

So this is how I ended up in the back of a police car somewhere in semi-rural Japan.

In America, I’ve been in a police car one time. Different story all together. What's important about that is when I was in said police car I took in a few key details.

First, there's a Plexiglas and wire screen dividing the front of the cab with the back. Second, the back seats are plastic and have no seatbelts. And, there are no handles on the doors or any way to manipulate the windows.

Not a luxurious experience.

Quite the opposite in Japan.

Brand new Toyota Prius, with plush cloth seats and seatbelts and automatic doors and windows and all. And there was nothing whatsoever partitioning the cab.

The ride was pleasant.

When we arrived to the scene of the crime they got down to business. Flashlights, digital camera, tape measure, sketch pad.

It was quite an ordeal.

I smoked a cigarette and watched as they measured the distance from the street to the bike lot and from the bike lot to various spots adjacent to the lot. I stretched my mind, trying to answer their questions about which cardinal direction my bike was facing and what type of lock I used.

I can’t help but wonder if I would have gotten the same treatment if I weren’t a foreigner.

If this had happened in America, the situation would have went down like this:

Me: My bike was stolen from outside my apartment.

Police: Was it locked?

Me: No.

Police: You’re a dumbass. Get out of here. Lock it up next time.

Fortunately when I bought the bike in December I paid a few extra yen to register the bike as mine. That bought me an orange seal with a number on it. Right now, somewhere out there, my number is being used illegally by some lawless fiend. And the Japanese police are out to get them. Maybe.

***
The neon streets bustle with the revelry of Saturday night.

Earlier I had made a plan to meet Minsky and two of his Chinese friends for dinner and drinks. I was late because of the ordeal with the police. They didn’t mind.

I found them on the second floor of a nondescript izakaya. The place was warm and small. An old acoustic guitar rested in a corner. The woman in the kitchen was old. When I sat down there was already food on the table and they were not yet done with their first drink.

The girls were a little older. The cute one didn’t know any English. The one who knew a little English was unfortunate looking.

I ordered gin and tonic.

We talked causally and drank at a quick pace. Before sitting down they secured a deal on a two and a half hour all-you-can-drink course.

Gin turned into beer and beer turned into hot sake and the night drifted by like clouds passing in the sky.

We stumbled out of the place and into a clear night.

I tried to get the cute one to come home with me.

Her friend kept her safe.

I walked home alone in the night.

I was pissed.

Pissed off at my bike being stolen, pissed off that the girl didn’t come along. Pissed off of booze.

I was halfway home when I saw the white mountain bike. It was unlocked.

In a moment of drunken brilliance and self loathing, I got on the unlocked bike and started riding. I was hungry and needed to go to 7-11. I rode the bike there and bought a bento. As I was paying for the midnight snack, I was hit with a overwhelming sense of guilt and moral confusion.

Where is the logic in handing over hard-earned money to a massive, faceless corporation, yet stealing from unsuspecting individuals who stupidly leave their bikes unlocked?

I returned the bike to where I found it and walked home with my bento.

When I woke up the next morning my bike was still gone, I was alone and the bento lay on the floor unopened.

i bought three plants today. they're all in identical white plastic pots on my shelf. the one on the left is purplish and squatty. the middle one is the tallest. it has long bladelike leaves that are green in the center and outlined in yellow. then there's the bright green one on the right. it's cute. sorta like a small bush in a white pot. i think it's a lime plant. i can't remember.

i went to the nursery of the the hardware store down the road. i told the woman working that i needed her help finding good plants; that i was new at this and i didn't want to get in over my head. i also said i needed house plants. they must stay indoors with me.

now we are here together in this apartment. i am satisfied with my plants. they are well behaved and keep to themselves. but they make me feel satisfied and happy. i will love them and care for them and we will make each other happy.


at some point i life i want to get a dog. i will care for it. i will love it. we will make each other happy.

but i'm too irresponsible for that to happen now. it'll have to wait.



wish me luck.

so ralph nader wants to be president. this is the third time he's entered the race. i like the guy, i'd likely have more agreements on social and political issues with him than i would any other presidential candidate. i'm not sure he'd be a great president. but i'd be willing to give the guy a shot. he seems reasonable.

but the man is not electable. obama is. so is clinton. so is mccain. huckabee wouldn't stand a chance in a general election. but he could probably sneak in as vp. that would suck, but cheney was worse. nader couldn't carry a majority. i wish a man with his ideas and values could, the man's head is in the right place. but people aren't ready for nader. it's not going to happen.

people are ready for obama. people are ready for hillary.


hillary wouldn't be a bad president. she'd be a vast improvement to what we've had to deal with for the past two terms. and i believe her when she says that she could come in there on day one, pick up the ball and play. she could take action from the moment she sets in. i have little doubt of her ability to do so.

but she'd just be a new face in the same game, running plays out of the same book.

i need change. i think we all do.

if hillary were to be elected and served a full term, it would make more than twenty years of clintons and bushes in the oval office.

legacy doesn't need to be part of our political process. we need to move away from that, for the sake of the country. that's my biggest beef with hillary.


there's probably several thousand american citizens living and working in japan. i wonder how many of them will still be here in november, and who will actually take the time to cast an absentee ballot from abroad.

it's a presidential election. it's a big deal. you have to vote. but how much do votes from abroad count. the media controls the election results. as soon as a candidate gets a majority, the associated press will call the election, then other news outlets will follow suit to keep up with the game. this is all done before every ballot is actually counted. statistically, it's a reasonable thing to do. but it makes me think my vote is not going to matter. and that's shit.

but fuck it. i'm going to vote anyways. and it's going to be for obama. and maybe things will get better. or maybe they'll stay the same.

file under: fever dream

You can see me. I know you can.
I know this because I can see you too.
Why don't you say hey you?
I always initiate these things, it seems.

I sit here and wait for it.
I watch you from afar.
Maybe you’re busy,
But our talks are always good,

Even if they’re short.
So I’m sitting here, waiting.
Watching.
I want to say something,.
But everything inside says to hold off

And so I do, because for whatever reason,
It seems right.

Then I watch you close the door behind you.

"Instead of taking the teenager home, the Arlington man drove to an abandoned house in Fort Worth, beat his stepson with a baseball bat and sodomized him with a metal tool, police said."

This is an actual quote from an AP news story.

It is also the kind of sentence every journalist dreams of writing.

This must mean at least two things:

1.) The world, especially Texas, is fucked up; and,
2.) Journalists can be sick fucks.

To give this quote a little more context, The Arlington Man is the stepfather of an 18-year-old who allegedly sodomized his stepfather's biological 8-year-old daughter.

I might be wrong on this, but I also think Arlington, Texas is the setting of the animated FOX series King of the Hill. While I'm sure this is purely coincidental, I am also not surprised to hear this this bizarre act of sodomy occurred by the hand (?) of a man from such a place.

(EDIT: I just Wikipediaed King of the Hill, which is set in the fictional town of Arlen, Texas. Not Arlington. But that doesn't matter. My position still stands.)

During the the relatively brief time I was employed as a professional journalist, I got to see and do a number of ridiculous things in the name of good journalism.

Sneaking around the scene of a murder looking for a witness of sorts to give me a quote, waiting in suspense for a bank to blow-up by the hand of an deranged methhead hunting for cash, sitting next to real journalists who cover important national issues, such as the time when the President made a stop in KC to tout his new health care plan (which, uh, I'm still waiting to see, Bushy), these things made my job interesting. It was without doubt the most interesting job I ever had.

But it was also one of the most boring. When you're covering an area like Eastern Jackson County, Mo., there's honestly not a lot of excitement. There were days where I'd be begging for a fire or a robbery or something, anything to get me out of my desk and away from the hopeless and/or pointless story I was chasing only because I had run out of options and I had to file something for the next day.

It's a sick, sick thing to actually be happy when there's a fire or a bank robbery. And whenever there was and it was my job to cover it, I couldn't help but feel a little happy. An important assignment, a story that will be on the front page, that everyone will read, something to do at 2:30 on a Wednesday, a reason to quit making calls to the city waterworks department to find out if Mrs. Robinson really did step on a manhole cover and fall through, or if that woman was just fat and crazy.

I've just gone through the archives of the old newspaper, looking for sentences I wrote that could compete with the likes of the aforementioned metal tool sodomy, this is the best thing I could dig up in about five minutes of searching:

"A house party in unincorporated Jackson County went awry early Sunday morning when a man shot his brother in the face."

Nowhere near as good as metal tool sodomy. But still. I remember when I wrote this, I was working the weekend shift and I was the only one in the newsroom and I got a press release from the sheriff's department and jumped on it. I think we even joked about it over coffee the next morning.

That's sick.

Also sick: The Dead List that circulated throughout the newsroom; A list of names of newsworthy people that were to believed to be dead within the year. The person with the most correct names on the Dead List was to win some sort of cash prize. And of course notoriety.

I can only imagine the sick shit that goes on in a newsroom in Arlington, Texas.

so it's tomorrow and i call you to discuss Everything and you don't answer and not just that but the skype tells me that the Call Is Refused and i don't know what that means other than that you don't want to talk to me because it's nearly one in the am but you should be awake right now because it's a good time for the conversation and when i speak with you i undoubtedly have the Good conversation and that's what i need about right now and everybody is gone and the songs are sad and the sunshine is far far away and i am here in this cold and smokey place with the whisky and the empty wine bottle and the half smoked joint and i'm looking for some person to speak with because i am rather frustrated and behooved with most things at the moment and i think everyone has to be working tomorrow and i do too but i'm far, far beyond caring about that at this point and i think it would be good to talk about how your new year was and what you did for christmas in the american wasteland. i think tomorrow there is a primary election in new hampshire and i hope that barack obama does well and that mike huckabee is destroyed and put back in his place at the bottom of the food chain. maybe a week ago i returned from thailand. i was in bangkok for a few days and also on these islands off the coast of the gulf of thailand. on christmas eve it was a monday and some time in evening as the sun was sinking down somewhere below the ocean i was on a boat filled with hundreds of people from all over the world and we were all dancing and drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and waiting for the full moon to show itself and when it did it was massive and scary and bigger than i have ever seen it before in my entire life because i was so close to the equator. and this boat was taking us to The Full Moon Party, but this wasn't just any full moon party it was The Full Moon Party, the biggest in the world. they all started on this small island called Ko Phang Nang and when i turned up when the moon was bright and high in the warm winter sky; and there were thousands and thousands and thousands of people roaming and dancing and crawling all over the place like freaks and drunken monsters. this dirty place was covered by scourges of boozed-out freaks sketchy transvestites and drug dealers and firedancers and zombies and ridiculous people fucking in the sand and pissing in the ocean and passed out and robbed on the beach. i was there high of cheap marijuana, talking with Randal and this stark raving man comes up to us and he says, "hey man, have you had the Mushroom Shakes?" and i tell him that it's imperative that he tell me were to get one and he points somewhere far far down the beach and says go towards the red lights, and pull him close to me and tell him to not lie and say the truth and this man is fucked up and i can tell it from his wild eyes and he says to go towards the red lights and so i tell Randall that we're going and we trek down the beach towards this psychedelic zombie factory and and there are signs on the way up the stone steps that read MUSHROOM SHAKEs and i that is exactly what needs to happen and so i go into this discotech and the lights are swirling everywhere and everything is fabulous and i ask the seedy Thaiman to give me what i'm looking for and he looks around with an eye of caution and then gives me the plastic cup of this thick black liquid and i carry it away down to the shore and sit on a rock and drink it quickly and start walking and maybe 15 minutes later i can feel something different and i have this urgent and compelling urge to get rid of this horrible plastic cup and i see this place where many others have put their cups to rest and so i do the same and join the rest of the zombies and i wander all night long looking for nothing and searching for everything and i meet people who are lairs and i meet people who are true and there are others who don't know what's happening and there are more who are just there to rob me but i am able to swim through all of this madness and enjoy the lights and the firedancers and the glowsticks and the heavy dance music and i smoke a lot of cigarettes and i started conversations with random folks from all over this rock and some of them are normal and some are too fucked to comprehend, like the fat guy from the UK who kept raving in my ears about Cambodia. this man who would never blink kept looking at me like i was his only friend, and say, " the Killing fields, man. the Killing fields. you have to go and see the Killing fields. it will Change you. and i heard him but at that point i could do nothing. i could barely understand this crazy person and so i escaped and went back to that party and by this point i had lost Randall in the fray. and i felt a little bad about it because i had encouraged him to drink one of these psychedelic cocktails and then left him alone because he was starting to Make Me Crazy and i had to get out of this horrible place and so I left the man raving about Cambodia and went and pissed in the ocean and when i was looking at what all was around me there were lifeless bodies and people naked and sandy and full of ecstasy and fucking on the shores and there was trash and discarded clothing and all kinds of unwanted shit and dregs and so i had to get away from this place and went towards the fire and this skinny thai man pulled me on to the ground and stuck his nasty beard in my face and asked me what kind of pills i wanted to buy and i didn't know how to answer this freak so i said i needed to have a cigarette and we smoked one and he kept trying to sell me drugs and i really wanted to have The Drugs but i didn't' trust this lunatic man, because i thought he would sell me over priced goods and then turn around and sell me to the cops to make another buck and so i smoked with this seedy man and then i left and and wandered down some alley and met these old people who must have been at least 45 and i asked them were they were from and they said, "We're European," and I asked them What The Hell that meant and they said they wanted to buy me a drink because i had a cute face and so i let them and eventually I found out they were Germans and we had some cocktails and then i told them i had to leave and I started looking for my friend Randall but in the horrid mix of transvestites and zombies and dead bodies it was too hard to find him and by then i was in need of some company and so i pretended to lose my cigarette lighter and sat down next to these people form Australia asked for a light and this guy said they didn't' have one but that he was Really Good at finding lighters and so I sat there and waited and he came back with a lighter that i really didn't' need and it came along with this schizophrenic man from Scotland who had a gigantic talking lizard and this crazy fucker talked with me and these Aussie girls until at somepoint they left to use the bathroom and they never came back because I think they realized there was more than just one crazy fucker talking to them in the middle of the night on christmas day.