It's done. It's over. It's dead. Finally.

It was a spider the size of which warrants burning the place down if in the U.S. How big? If I spread out my fingers and then clench the middle knuckles, that's about how big. Now I don't have huge hands, but never mind, if you're comparing the size of a spider to your hand, it's fucking big. An Australian might have thought it cute ("You call that a spider, mate? 'At's more like a pet, give it a name" Sorry, my Australian accent is terrible. I hope yours in your head is better).

Taiwan? I haven't heard of anything this big showing up in anyone's home, but I have seen larger in the great outdoors on hikes and thought, "I'd hate to find one of those in my room". How does a spider that size even get around in the city? Uber? And if they can get around in the city, why have I never seen one outside. Then it somehow just shows up in my apartment?

It was the stuff of nightmares or horror films. It made its first appearance back in August, more than four months ago. I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and when I turned the corner and could see into the bathroom with the faint ambient light coming from out the window, I noticed the dark splotch on the floor that wasn't supposed to be there.

Quickly assessing it was some sort of bug, I sucked it up that I would just have to deal with it. I didn't fetch my glasses because . . . why? I didn't want a clear look at whatever it was I was likely going to have to squash. I stepped into the bathroom and closed the door to keep it from escaping, entering the field of battle. Then the fucking thing took off! Holy shit, it was fast. I realized it was a spider and faster'n you could yell "fuck me in the ass!" it had scampered a bit up the wall and back down and out of the bathroom through the crack at the bottom of the door. I threw open the door freaked out at how fast it moved.

It disappeared behind the large cabinets that line one wall of my apartment. There was nothing I could do, it was safe there. I probably waited a bit to see if it might come out but knew it probably wouldn't. It ran scared and was going to stay where it was safe. Aside from lightning speed, things I noted before peeing and going back to bed include: 1) It had excellent eyesight; 2) It's strongest instinct was fear; 3) Did I mention it was fucking fast?

Yea, I went back to sleep. Long time ago, lesser spiders in the room would've kept me awake. But I've actively worked on minimizing irrational fears such as those of spiders, and there was no point in literally losing sleep about a situation where I couldn't do anything.

Thing is, I knew it was there. I knew it wasn't just going to disappear, find its own way out. I knew it was still there when I woke up, and over the course of weeks that fact became manifest.

Furniture lines that wall of my apartment. Three large closet cabinets with my desk and a steel frame shelf, where the wall behind it can be seen, between them. The spider could move freely out of sight under and behind the furniture. If it moved on the wall behind the shelf, I could see it but there are too many obstructions to do anything except note it and shudder.

It did make appearances over the course of weeks. I kept a sneaker handy to hurl at it if I got the chance, and once did but more to scare it. I knew there was no chance of hitting it and there's still a sneaker mark on the wall. The miracle was that I didn't create my own disaster by knocking a bunch of shit over, which with my luck I would've expected to happen. There were several ghost appearances where I swore I saw it in dim light but wasn't 100% certain. 99% when it was right under me while at my desk and ran back under the closet. 1% chance it was my imagination.

It stopped making appearances sometime in October. I optimistically hoped it had escaped, but knew that was unlikely. More realistically it had starved to death. I mean, what was it eating? I continued to terrorize myself over it and stayed vigilant; frequent visual room scans, not only left and right but up and down, especially going to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

It met its sad end tonight after over two months without a sighting. I came home, turned on the lights, took my shoes off and did a room scan (that's something I routinely do after coming home, not because of the spider. I don't know what's my childhood trauma that justifies being so paranoid. I just don't like surprises and anything can happen in this world). Then I turned around and there it was on the wall right by the door.

Of course I hesitated. I froze. That gave it a chance to get behind the open closet door against the wall by the door. Note that I saw it and that it hadn't bolted. It was probably a good 15 seconds from when I entered the room and spotted it and it was just sitting on the wall. As scary and huge as it still looked, this thing was tired and likely emaciated. I kicked at the closet door but knew the gap to the wall was enough not to crush it.

I picked up a sneaker I had just taken off and pulled the door away from the wall and there it still was. It hadn't run to safety in the gap between the closet and wall. I took a thwack at it and missed and it reacted but didn't run. I followed up with a solid bonk and that knocked it wounded off the wall and to the ground. The coup de grace was easy and undramatic. You don't want to squash something that big. Kill it with blows. Blunt force trauma. And I could because it was already almost starved to death. If it was healthy and vital, any shot I might have would've been a frenzied, scream-like-a-girl, splatter-force blow and the clean-up would be even more disgusting and traumatic.

I did feel bad for it. Partly because of a book I had just finished at the library about the Armenian Genocide. When I first struck and missed the spider, it didn't run; likely too tired, too incapacitated for instincts to fully kick in, not unlike the starved, skeletal Armenians who were force marched by the Turks into the Syrian desert to their deaths. With the second blow it seemed to be like "why are you doing this to me?", not unlike when the Turks rounded up Armenian men and marched them away from their homes and villages and massacred them without mercy. Could I show it no mercy? At least now I know it's gone. That's the way it had to go. That's not how the Turks felt about the mass murder of Armenians after the WWI effort, allied with the Germans, failed. If I was a Turk, I'd be like "Spider? What spider? It was coming right at me" and then gone on killing spiders for the next five years.

Postmortem, I did as the Australian in my head said and named it Gonzalez. Speedy Gonzalez.

Had this facebook messenger exchange with my cousin Audrey over the course of a few days:

Audrey: Merry Christmas and happy new year.
Me: You too, and the kids! But we're not Christian. And we celebrate Lunar New Year and that's not for a month.
Audrey: You celebrate no holiday.
Me: I have nothing to celebrate.
Audrey: Celebrate that you are still here. (emphasis mine)

Gob-smacked. Wow, was that a stunner. Celebrate that I'm still here? Why? Who would say that to me? I just can't get my mind around anyone saying that to me whether they know me better or not. OK, it's more understandable from someone who doesn't, but from my cousin it near took my legs out from under me.

It's hard to describe the feeling. Wanting to punch her in the face? No that's unimaginable. Punch someone else in the face? Yea, something like that. Undirected aggression without anger. I almost felt insulted. So insulted that it almost amused me. Like I said, hard to describe. Disgust in there, too, a bit. Bitter, bad taste in my mouth. Celebrate that I'm still here. *smack* *smack* *bleah*

I'm still sifting through the layers of possible meaning and reason. Was she being characteristically tone deaf about an issue that should be lightly trod or was she  joking? This is the mind of a suicide, folks (often frustratingly unreadable, double entendre intended).

My cousin and I do that simple verbal sparring thing where some nonsense is said that's sort of a challenge to the other how to respond. That's what my first response was, not that I meant it to be. So then her reply follows in that same vein and is also a joke and a challenge. My reply as well, with glib hyperbole and faux dark tones that "people who know me" might wonder if I was being half serious and roll their eyes and ignore it as a result.

So was her last line joking or earnest? Logic suggests it's a joke. And if it was a challenge of 'let's see how you respond to this', she clearly won. I haven't responded. If it were a face-to-face exchange, and more clearly joking around, I likewise would have lost with no way to respond. And that's the point of the game.

Ah yes, it's actually a game in Korea, I've seen it on TV. Two people take turns trading taunts trying to trigger the other person. I've seen it in Chinese movies, too, where it's like a poetry duel using verses instead of taunts. They can range from the non-sequitur and absurd to pure zen. People everywhere engage in it with friends as a matter of conversation.

So I was successfully triggered. I can let it go. Did she mean to go too far? Well, that's the point of the game. Did she know she was going to far? Never mind the mind of a suicide, how about the mind of an acquaintance?

Short answer is that she has no idea about me and has stated as much ("of course you'd never commit suicide" were her approximate words and then going on without waiting or looking for how I'd respond). The longer answer is that she should at least have some sort of awareness and may be in denial. She has been exposed to ample evidence that something is not right with this picture and it wouldn't take much to put the pieces together to not brush any possibility aside (like she did).

Of course I would never commit suicide? Why? What gave her that idea? Buddhism probably. It's the perfect excuse to not deal with something she knows she can't deal with.

It is also totally possible that her final response was purely sarcastic. I was being sarcastic. Do you know what sarcasm is?

I kinda feel it would be remiss to not mention Shinee's Jonghyun committing suicide at age 27 last week. I'm not a fan of K-pop boy groups, but I am aware of them and respect a bunch, especially one of the original top groups of the second Hallyu wave.

I am familiar with the names of all five Shinee members. I have seen their promotion performances on music shows and acknowledge they are amazing, charismatic and talented. I knew Jonghyun also wrote songs for Shinee and other singers. It's a short list of K-pop idols who also write. When I find that an idol also writes, they get a gold star next to their name for creativity. They create.

My reaction to the news was probably very typical and of normative nature. Disbelief, terrible loss, tragic. He was young, famous, adored, talented. He had it made. He had made it. His suicide was felt far and wide, and more than he could likely contemplate. He was a public figure. He had responsibilities. Why?!

Since then it has come to light that he had been fighting depression his entire life and it finally overwhelmed him. There was nothing vain, cavalier or impulsive about his suicide. It wasn't the result of life circumstances that would likely have changed if he just lived on. He wasn't distraught over some tangible thing and went home and hanged himself like others have. He was and always has been in the middle of a dark storm that few people can even imagine. And it wasn't going to go away. Ever. He would eventually have been consumed by it.

Usually I hate the cliche platitude the living use to comfort themselves saying the dead have gone to a "better place". Not that anyone has said that about Jonghyun, but I would be alright with it if they did. It is a good description. He has gone to a better place: Not here.

He meant to do it. It wasn't what I call a "suicidal gesture" whereby a door is left open to be rescued. He meant to do it despite a final text message to his sister who did promptly inform the police.

Usually I would consider that kind of act a call for help with an unconscious half-expectation to be saved. His final text wasn't that. I believe he had no expectation or desire to be rescued.

It was partly a definitive good-bye, but it may have also served a practical purpose given the way he did it. He burned charcoal in a frying pan releasing deadly concentrations of carbon monoxide. The text also served as an alert so that someone would arrive, not to save him, but to turn off the burner and air out the CO so that no one else would be harmed.

It's anyone's guess whether he actually thought of that. Considering the information reported, I would bet that he did. He would have run the scenario in his mind and noticed the danger to other people and taken measures so that others weren't harmed. That fits with the profile of the type of person he was.

That would also answer a question I had about how his sister knew where to send the police. He didn't do it at home, he had rented a short-term apartment for the purpose.

Renting the apartment wouldn't have raised bells. On a most simplistic level he could just tell people he needed a fresh space to write. But then why give his sister the address? Anyone could contact him by phone. The only reason would be the expectation that someone would need to go there.

There are actually plenty of other reasons why she would've known, maybe she had even been there, but basically, dispelling all suspicion, she had it because he gave it to her. It could've been a totally innocuous message saying that he was renting a place so he could write, here's the address if anyone needs me. She would have read it and not thought it suspicious that he was including an address, but there it is planted. It is in the range of suicides to think like that.

Why he rented a place to do it and didn't do it at home is also something we will never know but also goes into the mind of a suicide. It suggests this wasn't spontaneous but planned over a period. There may be an element of separating and getting away from his familiar life. Suicidal thoughts was probably something he lived with, but renting the apartment was a definitive indication that he knew or decided now was the time. Specific reasons of his own we can't know.

Fans have noted other clues that could only be noticed as meaning anything in retrospect. He had a visible tattoo of a black dog that is a symbol for depression? That's news to me, but OK, the article explained it. Fans noted that at a recent broadcast he skipped a sentence that they could see displayed on his teleprompter mentioning his comeback in January. There are other possible reasons for it, but now it looks like he didn't mention it because he didn't expect to be around in January.

My going on and on about this displays the truism about suicide that it leaves more questions than answers. Details can be pondered, contemplated, analyzed, speculated upon, rocks thrown at, poetry written, statistics cited, Broadway shows composed, but we'll never know for sure.

I sympathize with Jonghyun. And I'm glad there has been a lack of public condemnation or judgment regarding his suicide. People seemed to grasp the true tragedy quite quickly, which is not merely that he committed suicide, but that he suffered so much to the point of committing suicide.

I can't say I was a fan, I don't have any Shinee in my music collection*, but I respected him and joined as one of the silent mourners around the world.

In that final text message Jonghyun sent to his sister, there is a phrase that has been translated in two different ways. Fans have latched onto the translation of him saying to his sister, "Tell me I did well". I think there's a very Korean nuance to it that I can't explain. Fans have responded en masse in their condolences telling him he did well. Same as me, it was probably the first thing they thought when they read that message in the news. You did well, Jonghyun.

* I do have several songs that Jonghyun penned for female singers in my collection. In fact, the day after he died, IU's "Gloomy Clock" written by and featuring him came up on my iPod Shuffle. The iPod was loaded the day before he died. That's a 2GB capacity iPod randomly selecting from a 100GB collection. That was one hell of a coincidence.

I don't know what came over me, it's probably another obsessive distraction, but I've started reading about World War I. While my childhood included World War II as a hobby, I never had any particular interest in WWI. My knowledge consists of scattered cursory bits of associated information like trench warfare, gas warfare, the first tanks, pointy German helmets, etc. I knew Franz Ferdinand was not the lead singer of the band (apparently there were fans who thought that).

I'm reading The First World War (1999) by John Keegan. As a supplement I also found at the library a rather massive photo book, The Great War, by Imperial War Museums (U.K.). Fortunate for me, since it's a visual reference to help picture how bleak and harrowing what I'm reading was. Fortunate also because it's not a reference that I'd otherwise come by casually. Only people really interested in the war would have it on their bookshelves, I shouldn't wonder.

I think anyone who doesn't know much about WWI but has any hint of interest in it or related subjects (and there are many) should read up on it. On one hand, it's very simple to describe and understand the contours of what happened and what led up to it. On another hand, it's an historical enigma that scholars are still debating about. You can point out all the various factors that contributed to the war, but adding them all up doesn't amount to the sheer magnitude of the horror and suffering caused and endured. You look at results and wonder why combatants weren't smacking themselves in the forehead asking what was going on and how it happened and why they didn't just yell "Stop! Wait a minute. What are we doing?". There were reasons. Many, many reasons, and none of them counters the insanity or incredulity of it.

Having nothing to compare it to, I found Keegan's book quite adequate and engaging. I felt I got a decent grasp of the contours of the conflict, but I would definitely look at other books for comparison if I find them. My major complaint was "white noise" information of troop movements which didn't help illustrate anything or mean anything in terms of strategy or intent. Same with eastern front fighting after the Russians withdrew. Oops, was I supposed to say *spoiler alert*?

I skimmed over those parts not feeling they were important, interesting or compelling to the narrative or knowledge of the war. Similarly, the Russian Revolution is covered so quickly it's almost laughable. That's not necessarily a problem or criticism. In a volume such as this, that's all that could be expected for a topic that deserves its own book. And I did laugh at the description of the Bolsheviks' frantic instruction to sign a peace treaty "at German dictation" when their delay tactics failed and Germany started invading.

Reading about the causes of WWI, it's easy and tempting, if not blindingly obvious, to draw parallels with the current world situation and whether a third world war is in the making. A lot of the debate over WWI is whether it was preventable or was it inevitable. Trying to answer that is to enter the quagmire.

I think the strongest argument today that WWIII is inevitable is the fact that WWI happened. The question whether it is preventable or inevitable is equally uncertain today and as much of a quagmire, and once you draw all the parallels of the fragile relations, belligerent stances and war readiness, the likelihood of a WWI situation goes way up. The scenario of a side conflict leading to an international crisis that no one will check because of self-interest, distractions, basic stupidity or any number of factors, then escalating into a worldwide conflagration is not so hard to imagine when reading about WWI.

Only the over-optimistic would doubt the world situation today is a powder keg waiting to blow. A pot coming to a boil. A powder keg in a pot coming to a boil. No wait, the boiling water would neutralize the powder. But seriously, with the presumptive main combatants being the U.S. and China or India and China or China and anyone but Russia, and non-presumptive but potential flashpoints of North Korea or Taiwan, that shit's gonna be hard to contain.

This is the dashcam of South Korean actor Kim Joo Hyuk in late October in the moments before he suffered some medical problem and crashed, dying later at the hospital. The full clip starts at 0:21.

After traffic goes through the intersection, pay attention to the black SUV to the right and then the black sedan that passes on the right. That's when Kim starts having (or noticing) problems and is either trying to get to the side of the road or has already started losing control of his functioning. It looks like he probably sideswipes the black sedan (not caught on the dashcam), who is probably honking like mad (no audio), alerting the SUV in front, who presumably seeing the collision in his mirror, steps on the gas and speeds away to not get involved.

As Kim's control further deteriorates, the cam shows a black sedan (presumably the one he hit) come up on the left, partially blocking Kim's car. Presumably, logically, the sedan driver only knows that he's been hit and Kim's car didn't show any sign of stopping because of the accident, and therefore he wants to prevent Kim from leaving the scene. That's when Kim loses all control of his functions and presumably his foot falls heavy on the accelerator leading him to hit the sedan again, careen towards the sidewalk and crashing. The last image before cutting off is Kim's vehicle flipping over. He had to be extracted before being sent to the hospital. From my very limited layman's experience and knowledge, I might profer he suffered either a seizure, heart attack or stroke. The autopsy was inconclusive.

What's sad and profound to me is that the dashcam includes the last things Kim Joo Hyuk saw of this world. He probably didn't wake up that morning and consider he might die that day. He may have, but I daresay most of us don't. He certainly didn't get into his car thinking he was about to die.

Everything was going normal until it wasn't. A late afternoon commute, driving from one place to another as he does every day. That's the profound part of the clip, not the accident but the normalcy leading up to it.

Death is a universal experience, but so are the moments of each of our lives leading up to dying that the dashcam so poignantly captures. And since we generally don't know when or how death comes, we don't know when those last moments of normalcy are being experienced. So breathe.

Then again, there was Elvis who died on the crapper.

I can't even English this.

email. remaining parent. from dead parent's email. cruise. February. me go with.

There is no nope on the scale of nopes to express how absolutely and irrevocably nope the nope is.

The only possible reaction on my part was to immediately delete the email, wash my eyeballs out with soap and try to forget about it. If there is to be communication, since I no longer have a phone, it would be through an intermediary, i.e. my brother, whence the nope can at least be buffered. There is no precedent and therefore no acceptance of direct email communication between the chaos and its spawn (that would be me).