weather we like it or not

Woof. Last week of July, I think I can declare 2019 as a hell hot summer, and not merely a regular blazing hot Taipei summer. The only thing that mitigates this veritable blast furnace of a summer is reports from other places of incredible, assfault-melting heatwaves with temperatures that exceed the numbers here. Supposedly it's hotter in southern France as Le Tour makes its way to the Alps, with riders in the peloton literally dripping water as ice that they've stuffed down the backs of their jerseys melts. My brother confirms reports of the heatwave in the U.S. northeast ("yea, it's been a little warm") after I suggested it might be as hot as it is here (whoops, he actually called it "crazy hot", -ed.). Korean vloggers suffering in their heat also make me wonder if I'm just being a whiny li'l bitch about the heat here. That's until I see stats on Weather Underground like Taipei being "98° (feels like 114°)" (emphasis mine, but they should put them on their website). Martha Focker. France can eat its foie gras liver with its 40°+ Celsius. And we probably have at least another month of this with September bringing not a whole lotta relief.

I was kinda hoping that the 10-day forecast continually showing afternoon showers every day was just hyperbole, or obligatory for the summer in a "be prepared" sorta way, but they're quite literal this year. The past few years I've been spoiled by a lot of dry weather despite similar-looking forecasts. This year is more like the first few years after I moved here 13 years ago. I was always complaining about the rain and even kept record of how many days in a row it rained just to validate my misery. One summer when I had late afternoon class it was exactly like this. I would ride my bike to school in perfect merely blazing hot weather (pre-hell hot), but during class it would squall like we were under a waterfall, but then the sky would be clearing by the end of class with orange sunlight glistening off the asphalt and through drops falling from trees. I'm currently trying to adjust how I go about my days so that I can be home by the time the clouds change from fluffy-against-blue skies to Voldemort-approved ominous.

Ah, it all comes back to me now, that's when I discovered chocolate really helped whatever the feeling it was that came over me when it rained – tension, antsy, low-level anxiety. It was like in that Harry Potter book/movie after our hero was attacked by death-eaters(?) and a suspicious-looking adult kept giving him something saying, "eat this, it'll make you feel better". Turns out he was a new professor but you still didn't know if he could be trusted or if he was bent on bringing harm to the boy. Turns out it was just chocolate, well-known among muggles, not so much in the wizarding world. Go fig, maybe not entertaining enough as far as sweets go. But when it rains and I get that feeling, I pull out the chocolate and tell myself, "eat this, it'll make you feel better". And I swear it does.

I don't know why, but for the past few weeks I'd been thinking about sending my second older brother a birthday greeting email this year. He's the one who has de facto cut contact, whatever that means. I don't know if it's just with me or if it's the same with other family members, meaning he won't contact them first, but will respond appropriately if contacted. He'll behave appropriately if they visit, but only visits them in the course of going somewhere else. Maybe he never calls them to chat. Maybe he does? Does his family make family visits just to visit (the distance is from Philly to NY)? I just don't know, I have no idea what their relationship is. I only know that I'm persona non grata. And that's it, I don't know the reason or the feeling behind it or if even there is a feeling behind it or just a cold decision he made that he'll be courteous if I happen to be present (physically or electronically), but otherwise he wants nothing to do with me.

But since I "just don't know", maybe I'm not being fair in making any uninformed assessment just based on what it sorta kinda looks like feels like to me. I don't know what he actually thinks. And after all, he is the brother I've said has complete immunity in whatever he does in regard to me, I will always consider him . . . positively. I'll always say he was a good older brother. That goes with my oldest brother now, too. 

<real time>OK, I sent the damn birthday greeting email</real time>

Writing all that above made me say 'just send the damn birthday greeting while it's still his birthday over there' (hour'n half left). But now I'm gonna continue this post and regret sending it, because the assumption when starting this post was that I didn't send him the greeting and go on about why. 

But now there's no more point to this post since I sent the greeting; that changes everything. I was gonna mention my old idea of don't be something to someone when you're considering removing yourself being here permanently. The way things are going I'll be around for at least the next 500 years, but my everyday is always asking and looking for when and why not now.

I was gonna mention that our status is actually such that we can drop an email out of the blue and it wouldn't be a stunner. And now that I've sent the greeting, no, he won't be stunned by it. He may or may not reply to it. I'm guessing he'll neither be pleased nor displeased by it. It just is what it is. If he wants to respond, he will; if he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to. Full immunity, he can do no wrong. 

I was gonna mention that his birthday occurs during the Tour de France and he's a true cycling buff, so I could mention the tour in the email and it wouldn't be awkward just saying happy birthday and other generic pleasantries about the weather. And I did write briefly about the tour since there have been fireworks to get excited about.

That's so funny how I started this post with a good idea of where it would go, but then once the central assumption disappeared midway, I'm having trouble remembering what I was going to write about. Story of my life? Par for the course? Cliché?

I don't know why, but for the past few weeks I'd been thinking about sending my second older brother a birthday greeting email this year. But even while considering it, I knew I wouldn't actually send it. It was just good intentions; an exercise in sibling relations that in recent years might reasonably be described as "estranged" or "non-existent". My oldest brother and I still send obligatory birthday greetings, although this year he didn't even respond to mine with the obligatory thanks, the wife and kids and the weather are fine. My second oldest brother, we haven't at all in years. 

I think maybe I was considering it in more of a "because I can" way, that whatever frost, if one can call it that, has descended upon our siblingship, it's not of the nature that neither of us couldn't drop a random birthday greeting any year it dawned on us to do so. It was a mental exercise in potential and possibility; when you think of doing something you don't ordinarily do and can think of dozens of reasons why not, but then do it because . . . why not? It's a left turn, and my life paradigm when I was much younger was "always take the left turn". The left turn is the unknown, the adventure, the risk. Going straight is safe and boring, predictable. 

But that's potential, this is reality, and reality says don't send it; there's nothing wrong with safe, boring and predictable. There's no actual, active relationship between us. What would I be doing or saying by breaking radio silence and sending it? Hey, I'm here? Hey, I've been thinking about you? Neither of us cares about that sorta shit and might lead to further unexpected, unwanted consequences and communications. And besides, my current life purpose is to land all of my relations exactly where ours is, why would I mess with that? If I manage to commit suicide, people should have to wonder when was the last time they heard from me, and that's supposed to be the primary descriptive of our relationship.

Whatever, I'm just gonna send the damn birthday greeting email.

It's not like I have time for TV, but I watched HBO's 6-part miniseries based on Joseph Heller's Catch-22 and despite my early enthusiasm for a new adaptation and willingness to give wide latitude in considering it, I hated it by the end, forcing myself unenthusiastically to watch the last 3 episodes (after enthusiastically watching the first three episodes before realizing something was off). It was quite a disappointment.

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned before that I watched the 1970 Mike Nichols film in high school and absolutely loved it. Then I read the book and absolutely loved that even more. It's one of my favorite books from high school days. Then I re-watched the film sometime later and didn't love it quite so much. It just didn't compare to the book, although I think if I watched it now I'd be much more forgiving, giving it wide latitude, especially since this mini-series showed me how badly an adaptation can go wrong and totally miss the point of a work.

Given the nature of the source material, wide latitude needs to be given to any adaptation. There's a loose plot which isn't particularly important and mainly serves as a foil to describe and embellish, chapter-by-chapter, upon all these oddball characters and oddball situations that paints a decidedly non-oddball context (WWII) into something oddball and absurd in itself. Horrible incidents occur and are described in gory detail, injustices that make the blood boil are committed, but all are balanced with the word most often used to describe the book: satire. There's a joke in these pages, the absurdity and irony of war would make us laugh if it wasn't such a horrible reality. As satire, the work is supposed to make us laugh.

The mini-series goes fundamentally wrong by ignoring the satire (NB: an adaptation of a satire doesn't automatically make it a satire). It focuses on that not-so-important loose plot and treats it as a straight-forward, chronologically linear drama with literal depictions of events in the book while missing ironic and ridiculous subtexts. There is little to nothing funny about this mini-series, nothing absurd, ironic, satirical, sardonic or tongue-in-cheek. There's no tension between what's reasonable and unreasonable. There's nothing witty in the dialogue or the twists on logic. There's a lot that seems curious and weird because they're still using the satirical source material but are way off in rendering it and can't point to satire to explain it. Like when you try to crack a joke in a situation where no one feels like laughing.

The mini-series creates consequences to action where there should be absurdity, and just makes the protagonist loathsome, selfish, irresponsible, cowardly and immoral. Immoral? Modern wars are all pretty much immoral, but the mini-series seems to point to this one person as the epitome of immoral, when he's supposed to be the hero and one of the few who makes sense in all his absurdity. Confronted by an absurd situation, someone who is even more absurd sometimes makes the most sense. Instead, it's possible in the mini-series to count how many people literally die, directly or indirectly, as a result of "Yo-Yo"'s petty, short-sighted and self-serving actions and then witness his complete lack of remorse for his agency. Or maybe this mini-series is much more clever than I'm giving it credit for and it's saying something about the U.S. now. Probably not. Actually from the way they sequenced scenes, I'd say it was fully intentional that the viewer draw the lines of consequence pointing to Yossarian's culpability in many of the deaths of his comrades. The purpose for doing that eludes me because I just ended up disgusted with the guy and not caring what happens to him (the exact opposite from the book).

However I could be wrong. The reviews are good, although many seem to be doing the limbo to praise it and none have convinced me. I admit the look of the mini-series is very aesthetic and the performances and technical aspects decent. I'm not panning the series for what's not there (I think every reviewer did what I did when the mini-series was announced and re-read the entire 400+ pages book). There's so much in the book that they had full license over what they chose to use and what they left out. Although with so much material in the book, I fail to see why they had to add things that weren't in the book. Actually, almost one entire episode (focusing on Milo Minderbinder) I don't remember even being in the book except as straight narration.

I wonder if another reason for the good reviews might be that there's not a single reviewer, I shouldn't wonder, who hadn't read the book and they're really gushing about the book. Or maybe they hadn't watched the whole series yet when they reviewed it.

marking time

So I think the seasonal Plum Rains (lit. 梅雨) of May-June have come and gone, and methinks they were probably quite average this year. There have been weak years recently when they weren't all that prominent and strong years when it just rained for weeks on end with no small effect on seasonally affected nerves and lots of chocolate consumption to deal with it (I think there are people who argue the actual physiological benefits of chocolate, opposed to people who argue that chocolate just makes happy). And I think I've discovered that a hallmark of the Plum Rains is their unpredictability against weather forecasts. Has anyone else noticed how accurate weather forecasts have gotten in the past few years? In the course of my life I've always thought of forecasts as general guidelines as to what to expect. Even during my time in Taipei, the guideline has dictated "always carry an umbrella". But for however many years I've noticed forecasts to be surprisingly accurate within hours, with completely wrong forecasts to be the exception rather than the expectation.

Not so much during the Plum Rains. Advanced satellite and model analysis technology still can't factor in whatever the conditions are that make the Plum Rains so very unpredictable. I've had to walk my bike home miserable in the pouring rain twice already because the forecast and my looking up at the sky before heading out both missed it. More times than that I've left my bike home and nary a drop would fall from the ominous cloud cover. I think the Plum Rains are done now, and even with rain constantly and consistently in the afternoon weather forecast (we call it "summer"), there's a certain amount of confidence possible on whether it will actually rain or not in the next few hours I'll be out based on the rain percentage forecast and looking up at the sky.  

So it's summer, and that means it's hot. I haven't determined yet if this is a "hell hot" summer or just a "normal blazing hot" Taipei summer. Truth to tell, I haven't been paying much attention to my environs outside my apartment. I've been feeling unusually cut off and isolated – which isn't necessarily a bad thing, just a descriptive – for whatever variety of possible reasons. I even stopped "forcing" myself to go on 20-mile rides. The Plum Rains contributed to that at first, but then I just didn't feel like it when it started drying up. Once I want or feel the need, I'll go. I wonder if I'll feel like it after the Tour de France starts this weekend. I don't know why, but I just got the inkling to follow le Tour this year. Maybe it's a feeling of wanting to connect with something outside that's familiar.

It's not like I have time for TV, especially since my eyesight has degraded to the point that my laptop screen is too small and I use my flat screen TV as my main computer monitor. I can never just turn on the TV and have it on in the background (like Mandarin news to keep the language in my ears or movies I'm not sure I'm really interested in) while I stare at the laptop. It's one or the other, if I switch to TV, I'm watching a specific program or movie. I do not miss the waste of time that was channel-surfing. So I don't know what I'll do in following the Tour de France. I just know I won't watch the whole thing. Probably not even whole stages. And I should remind myself that watching cycling is inherently boring. You need the passion for the sport before you can watch it, although I'm sure there's an argument for that applying to all sports. Fair 'nuff. I'm gonna stick with the excuse that I'm trying to feel a connection with something about my life from before, despite it being useless, meaningless and futile. That got dark real quick.