There's nothing like an infirmity to make you feel old, but those kinds of reminders are simply natural occurrences that come with age and everyone eventually experiences them. More relevant to my situation is that there's nothing like an infirmity to disrupt the conveyor belt of routine that gets me from day to habit-defined day. 

What I think is sciatica in my right leg has been behaving as expected, sometimes it hurts, sometimes it doesn't; sometimes it's a low-grade dull pain, sometimes it's an exhausting, distracting sharp pain. Sometimes it feels like a nut, sometimes it don't. It's annoying, but in terms of degree of pain it's nothing compared to whatever's going on with my left knee, often overshadowed by it. The knee will hurt so much that sometimes I'd look to see if my right leg hurts and with a bit of concentrating, yup, there it is. 

Mind you, these are two different pains in either leg, making for two different types of limp if they occurred individually. When the pain in my right leg is just dull, that just slows me down. When it's sharp it causes a severe limp. The knee is mostly problematic when I have to bend it, so on stairs or anything even slightly uneven. At first it was so bad that in getting dressed I had to lay out pants on the bed and then slide and worm my way into them. When the pain in both legs peak at the same time, I avoid walking in public lest I look like a total spaz or a drunk on a pirate ship in a storm. 

The knee is very slowly improving with help from upping the dosage of Advil. When I said before that Advil had no effect, I was taking it how I usually take it: one pill and expecting whatever pain to go away. It finally occurred to me to up the dosage to two pills three times a day, trying not to go over the bottle recommended do-not-exceed-6-pills-in-24-hours-unless-directed-by-a-doctor. 

I still have a lot of ouch, my knee doesn't bend that way moments. Only it's supposed to bend that way, that's the purpose of the knee otherwise what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Advil dulls the pain enough to improve range of motion and allows me to ride a bike. Oh, and by the way I wasn't simply being a total geek by setting the seat on my common street bike high for more power. After the stem broke (because the seat was set so high) and I stuck the seat post directly into the stem tube, placing it at the lowest possible position, it was very obvious how little power there is in not being able to extend my legs. Now, an after-effect of the stem breaking and riding a bike with the seat at the lowest position (low rider?) is that I have to bend my knee more than if the seat were set high, and even with Advil I ride aware that there is pain if I bend it too much. But at least I can do it.

I'll still be optimistic and take improvement for what it is. Improvement hints this is something that will go away by itself. Even though its cause is a mystery, making it difficult to gauge the outcome, it's probably, hopefully, not a permanent or chronic condition like gout. I'm very glad that when I asked my sister-in-law to send over a bottle of Advil a couple years ago she unexpectedly sent a jumbo-sized bottle! At the time I didn't think I'd ever go through that much Advil, now I'm hoping it's enough. 

All this griping makes me feel like such a hypochondriac. I write about physical or physiological ailments like they're some big production, but then they go away and nothing ever comes of them. They disrupt the comfort of the day-to-day conveyor belt as I'm forced to focus on the pain and not wander beyond my immediate neighborhood, but it's only temporary. If it wasn't only temporary? . . . I don't know. The thing is that I want the conveyor belt to be disrupted to spur me on to greater things (death is the greatest adventure), but it seems all my efforts and energy are towards desperately maintaining the conveyor belt (mundane living). Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't are.

mizerable daze

The weather oracle has already declared this to be a La Niña winter and the long-range forecast for Taiwan is that it will be mild until the end of the year, and then temperatures would plunge after New Year's followed by a long, cold, bitter winter (of course Taipei is subtropical, but that's how I read it). I remember cold, bitter winters over the past 10 years because I would bring cold weather stuffis back from New Jersey because of them. Below average winters aren't pleasant, but at least I should be sorta prepared for them.

And that "mild until the end of the year" is turning out to be no comfort as Taipei has just had two solid weeks of gloom and drear when it wasn't outright raining, which it has a lot, and at least another week and a half of the same according to the forecast. Weeks and weeks of this kind of weather is also in my experience here, notably my first two winters. It seems every kind of worst winter weather is being dished out all at once this season, perhaps the universe's answer for Taiwan avoiding the worst of the CCP pandemic and making sure 2020 sucked for everyone!

Adding to the personal suckage of 2020, one of the two major hypermarts near my place closed at the beginning of the year/pandemic. It was the closer of the two and was in walking distance for alcohol runs during extended rain periods. The remaining store isn't too much farther away in the opposite direction, but requires going by bike. The result is that whenever there's a lull in the rain, I do an alcohol run and accumulate a stock to last as far into the rainy period as possible in case it turns into constant rain. So far there have been enough lulls to consistently maintain over a week's worth of alcohol. 

Even more suckage is developing sciatica in my right leg. Somehow I immediately knew it was sciatica when the pain started (the word just came to me) and was able to confirm its likelihood with a web search that described it exactly. It was pain that was both dull and sharp and I couldn't pinpoint where on my leg it hurt, it was just the whole turkey leg. The description of a "radiating" pain rang true. And since it's a nerve issue, there's nothing that can be done about it but wait for it to go away (similar to the ridiculous issue I had with my cervix long ago).

I expect the pain to simply go away as that seems to be my karma (pattern/habit) my whole life. Same with the pain on my left knee that has developed in the past two days. That's too soon to worry about and I'll finish off the glucosamine I have left which usually takes care of knee pain. Only a little disturbing is that Advil seems to have no effect and it really fucking hurts (not quite as fast as "sciatica" came to mind, "gout" became a possibility). It's far worse than the usual glucosamine-cured knee aches and hampers mobility. Outwardly, sciatica only slows down my walking to thinly veil a limp. This knee pain has shown effects on walking, stairs and bike riding; makes me look crippled, even on bike. 

And then there are the cold showers as mercury continues to descend. Even no where near the depths of a forecast long, cold, bitter winter, cold showers aren't pleasant. I'm still mindfully gauging my emotions at the lack of hot water while in the shower. I scroll through my range of emotions, wondering what I'm feeling. I know what I'm thinking; I'm thinking at least I'm not in the Siege of St. Petersburg, at least I'm not Jewish in the Holocaust. I'm only at "abandon ye all hope of hot water", but how do I feel about that? OK, cold. I feel cold. That's not what I mean. Frustrated? Wronged? I don't deserve this? Injustice? Violated? Tempting, but no, none of those.  

How am I supposed to feel as I jump under the cold shower? This sucks!, yes but that's not a feeling, it's a fact (or an opinion depending upon who you ask, i.e., someone who isn't directly experiencing it). Holy shit! yes, but that's more an expression of a feeling. What is the emotion behind that expression?

What goes through my mind is "let go of ego, let go of attachment (to comforts), let go of the self (what suffers)". There's something practice-related going on. What comes up in my mind is certainly not the peaceful deities/lights (representing the ground of reality) in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, but rather the wrathful deities that appear after liberation through the peaceful deities is missed. 

Wrathful deities is more like it. Wrath; this is more akin to anger. Not anger at anything or anyone, just a violent and virulent dissonant energy. It helps me get through it. If I wasn't angry, maybe I'd be wimpy and whiny and complain about it in bouts of self-pity, but St. Anger says, "be damned, cold water, it is not you who will defeat me". All the while not knowing it just may (along with sciatica, seasonal affective disorder, gout, isolation and not being known, gastrointestinal issues, alcoholism, etc., etc.). 

Anger has helped me survive a lot along my way. Is that a good thing? It can't be, can it? Anger and negativity feed each other. But I'd posit negativity as a general or background state – that's not good, it just taints and sours everything. Anger, when controlled, can be a sword, a weapon, an adrenalin bomb, something you need when confronted. Actually, no, it's not a good thing. I'm probably just trying to justify the "way I am", but it has likely caused more grief than good for me.

WordsCharactersReading time

It's no secret and I think no shame that I consider Genesis my fave band of all time, and I typically piggyback Peter Gabriel solo into that number one spot out of convenience. Peter Gabriel and Genesis (whether fronted by Gabriel or Phil Collins) were a huge part of my high school and life soundtrack. 

There are, however, limits to my fandom when artists, trying to keep up with technology, continually re-release or re-issue their catalogues and expect fans to keep up with the upgrades because of whatever bit of better sounding technology is introduced. I was perfectly happy with David Bowie's second round Rykodisc releases and completely ignored future rounds of re-issues claiming better fidelity because of technology. 

My attitude was the same when Genesis released their ultimate Box Set collections. Why am I gonna buy what I already have? What I didn't know was that they didn't just upgrade quality and technology, but it seems they went back to the original multi-track recordings and dug up things that were mixed out of the final original releases. That's interesting!

I only noticed because they've been uploading "official audio" videos, no doubt in part to get fans' attention to buy tickets for their "The Last Domino" tour next year, which is advertised in the video description. I rarely click on those videos because why would I? I've listened to the songs dozens or hundreds of times over the years. 

But then they posted this:

This is "The Battle of Epping Forest"! I clicked on this audio-only "video" expecting just to enjoy the song yet another time, but being so familiar with just about every second of old Genesis recordings, things I'd never heard before stuck out like a sore thumb. 

My ears perked up at the 2:17 mark with backing vocals I'd never heard before and putting me on notice to listen for other things new. Phil sings a high harmony and then ends on "war" with what I consider a classic Collins note – just an unexpected choice of note but sounds great. The lower vocals are evidence (there's not a lot) that Mike and Tony did actually record backing vocals they're always credited with, albeit they unimpressively sing in the same vocal range as their speaking voices (the way guys who are uncomfortable with singing sing "Happy Birthday"). The snarls and grunts of distorted guitar by Steve Hackett in the following section were also originally mixed out and there are a bunch of minor vocal parts throughout the song that have been restored; perhaps considered mistakes at the time, but interesting now.

The song is just epic silliness that only Genesis could really pull off. Other prog rock bands dabbled in whimsy and eccentricity in minor works, but mostly stuck to spacey and science fiction-y and dystopias and other-worldly things to imagine and think and be paranoid about. "Epping Forest" is a galloping, raunchy romp about mob bosses and their street gangs inspired by a story in the morning newspaper (as a cultural reference, I think of the Guy Ritchie movie "Snatch"). I think keyboardist Tony Banks (it was Phil) complained the song is too "wordy" and was disappointed about the vocals going by at a mile a minute, but I don't understand how he can complain or what they expected when they handed over this big hunk o' composition to Gabriel. 

Even just reading it it's something to behold; the puns, rhyming and word manipulation. The verse playing around with the Silver Cloud Rolls Royce is just confoundingly clever ("Did he just . . . ?", "Was that supposed to . . .?). There's a lot I didn't get until much later. Like I didn't know a Silver Cloud referred to a model of Rolls Royce until I heard the (possibly apocryphal) story of The Rolling Stones' "Get Off My Cloud", whereby they were in Texas and at one point one of the members was leaning on a car that happened to be a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud and when the owner saw it he drawled at them "Hey, get off my Cloud!".

Along the Forest Road, there's hundreds of cars - luxury cars

Each has got its load of convertible bars, cutlery cars - superscars!

For today is the day when they sort it out, sort it out

'Cos they disagree on gangland boundary

There's Willy Wright and his boys

One helluva noise, that's Billy's boys!

With fully-fashioned mugs, that's Little John's thugs

The Barking Slugs, supersmugs!

For today is the day when they sort it out, sort it out

As these Christian soldiers fight to protect the poor

East End heroes got to score 

In the Battle of Epping Forest

Yes, it's the Battle of Epping Forest

Right outside your door

And you ain't seen nothing like it

No you ain't seen nothing like it

Not since the Civil War

Coming over the hill are the boys of Bill

And Johnny's lads stand very still

With the thumpire's shout, they all start to clout

There's no guns in this gentleman's bout

And Georgie moves in on the outside left

With a chain flying around his head

And Harold Demure from Art Literature

Nips up the nearest tree

(Here come the cavalry!)

Amidst the battle roar

Accountants keep the score: 10-4

They've never been alone after getting a radiophone

The bluebells are ringing for Sweetmeal Sam

Real ham, handing out bread and jam

Just like any picnic . . . 

It's 5-4 on William Wright

He made his pile on Derby night

When Billy was a kid, walking the streets

The other kids hid - so they did!

And now after working hard in security trade

He's got it made

The shops that need aid are those that haven't paid

"I do my double-show quick!" said Mick the Prick, fresh out of the nick

"I sell cheap holiday, the minute they leave then a visit I pay

And does it pay!"

And his friend, Liquid Len by name of wine, women

and Wandsworth fame

Said, "I'm breaking the legs of the bastard that got me framed!"

They called me the Reverend when I entered the Church unstained

My employers have changed but the name has remained

It all began when I went on a tour

Hoping to find some furniture

I followed a sign saying "Beautiful Chest"

It led to a lady who showed me her best

She was taken by surprise when I quickly closed my eyes

So she rang a bell and quick as hell

Bob the Nob came out on his job to see what the trouble was

"Louise, is the Reverend hard to please!"

"You're telling me!"

"Perhaps, sir, if it's not too late we could interest you

in our old-fashioned Staffordshire plate?"

"Oh! No, not me, I'm a man of repute"

But the devil caught hold of my soul and a voice called out, "Shoot!"

To save my steeple, I visited people

For this I had gone when I met Little John

His name came, I understood

When the judge said, "You are a robbing hood!"

He told me of his strange foundation

Conceived on sight of the Woodstock nation

He'd had to hide his reputation

When poor, 'twas salvation from door to door

But now with a pin-up guru every week

It was Love, Peace & Truth Incorporated for all who seek

He employed me as a karma-ma-mechanic with overall charms

His hand were then fit to receive, receive alms

That's why we're in the Battle of Epping Forest

This is the Battle of Epping Forest

Right outside your door

We guard your souls for peanuts

And we guard your shops and houses for just a little more

In with a left hook is the Bethnal Green Butcher

But he's countered on the right by Mick's chain-gang fight

And Liquid Len with his smashed bottle men

Is lobbing Bob the Nob across the gob

With his kisser in a mess, Rob seems under stress

But Jones the Jug hits Len right in the mug

And Harold Demure, who's still not quite sure

Fires acorns from out of his sling

(Here come the cavalry!)

Up, up above the crowd

Inside their Silver Cloud, done proud!

The bold and brazen brass

Seen darkly through the glass

The butler's got jam on his rolls

Roy doles out the lot

With tea from a silver pot

Just like any picnic . . . 

Along the Forest Road, it's the end of the day

And the Clouds roll away

Each has got its load

They'll come out for the count at the break-in of day

When the limos return for their final review, it's all through

All they can see is the morning goo

"There's no one left alive, must be a draw"

So the Blackcap Barons toss a coin to settle the score!

- Gabriel/Banks/Rutherford/Hackett/Collins

What's more of a secret and not a little bit of shame is that I used to be able to sing (liberally speaking) the entire thing without a lyric sheet along with the record at the top of my lungs (and range) and with the accents when the house was empty or (alone) in the car. Oy vey.

mea culpa

I'm no longer watching those "China watch" YouTube news channels I mentioned in prior posts and I've unlinked them. Don't get me wrong, I steadfastly think China is the biggest threat to the U.S. and believe they consider themselves already at total war with us (in all ways but military because they know they currently couldn't win), and are using all means necessary to remove the U.S. from its position of global dominance in the coming decades and take that place themselves. 

China is not a friend. It is no partner. Friends and cooperative partners don't say the things that China has said to any country that challenged them since the pandemic began (threats, warnings, bluster). The Chinese Communist Party is a mix of organized crime and a terrorist organization and diplomatically somewhere between a hostile competitor and outright enemy and should not be engaged without metaphorical blades close at hand. Taiwan's literal motto towards China is "we sleep with our swords next to our pillows". Taiwan's advantage is we know China is the enemy and that they want to make us the next Hong Kong.

The reason I'm disavowing the China watch news sites is that during the U.S. election and afterwards, it turns out they are shamelessly pro-Trump and willing to use their news platforms to disseminate misinformation about voter fraud and that Trump won. That makes them no longer news, but right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda and not much different from Fox News or the CCP propaganda machine. They came down on one side of an opinion and stamped themselves as biased and no longer reliable as news sources.

The irony is that growing anti-China sentiment in the U.S. is bilateral with both Democrats and Republicans realizing the China threat is real, present and active, and that their infiltration efforts have been going on since the 90s after the west rolled over and played dead after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Australia and Europe are also just coming to this realization based on evidence and experience. By siding with Trump, these formerly-considered "news channels" are shooting themselves in the foot, becoming deluded conspiracy theory channels with limited credibility. If they can't report the facts as they are about the election and keep insisting on idiotic fringe rantings, then what should I believe about their reporting on China? It's about character and credibility, and they lost it. Is their reportage on China also idiotic fringe rantings that I accepted because it was what I wanted to hear, but not actual reality?

Further irony is that Trump is a much greater immediate danger to U.S. values and democracy (the China threat is further down the road). By supporting Trump (thinking his hardline stance against China furthers their own reasonable, supported-by-evidence message that the CCP is evil), they're in effect supporting undermining U.S. values and democracy, which is exactly what China would love! And it's probably no coincidence that I've noticed Trump's tactics and actions to have been very similar to what the CCP uses. Trump seems to take a hard line against China, but in reality he exhibits behavior that mirrors them, despotic and authoritarian, intolerant of dissent or disagreement, eliminating perceived enemies (including former "friends" he previously showered with effusive praise) with just an order. Xi Jinping made it possible for him to be leader for life, Trump has hinted his administration going beyond second or even third terms. His propaganda tactics of lying and continue lying until people believe those lies is chapter one in the CCP playbook (possibly taken from Stalin or Hitler).

To be clear and undeluded, I don't think a single person latched onto those YouTube channels because I shared them. I don't think a single person who didn't already know about the insidious nature of the CCP learned something new or became concerned. That's a good thing since it means I didn't spread pro-Trump, basically anti-American channels in that they're trying to subvert democracy. It also means I won't be getting China news to fan the flame against the CCP, but that just means I'm becoming more the average American. The average American would do themselves well by paying attention to any news that makes it to the mainstream about China and the CCP. It's something about which Americans should stay informed. Heck, the average American already missed the boat with ManBearPig climate change more than 20 years ago.

WordsCharactersReading time

A year ago I expected hot water. Last winter I demanded hot water. I can't recall ever living in a place that didn't have hot water. I'm a product of the first world and hot water is a hooman and hoowoman right!

I did start to have troubles with hot water last winter and given the above statement, it was perfectly reasonable to run the tap until I got hot water. I demanded hot water. Until last winter, hot water was completely reliable and I'd get it after running the water for just a bit. 

Last winter, for the first time ever there were more than a handful of instances when hot water wasn't forthcoming. It was a new experience, it was perplexing, and my solution was to run the tap until hot water came through, which it always eventually did. Sometimes it took 10 minutes, sometimes 20, once it took nearly an hour that I was wasting perfectly good fresh water down the drain waiting for hot water to come through! There was frustration and anxiety involved, and since I shower closer to lights out than not, it disrupted when I went to sleep. Even though it happened only a few times, every day there was doubt whether I'd get hot water reliably soon or I'd have to run the water for extended periods while going back to my computer and futz around, checking the water status every 5 or 10 minutes. 

As summer faded this year and temperatures started cooling, I just had a feeling remembering last winter, a premonition perhaps, that there would be no hot water when I asked the tap for it. Maybe not a premonition but just the product of my negative mind and pessimism. Whatever, the fact is that my fears have come to pass and I have no hot water. However, I was able to brace for it and change my attitude and assume and accept that I no longer have hot water. 

Going into winter, cold showers are now the expected norm. Granted, Taipei is subtropical and winters are on par with San Francisco, but even in SF I took hot showers in the winter (and summer). It's not like snow-bearing regions like New Jersey, Ohio, Seoul or Tokyo where I suppose cold showers in the winter would range in the realm of howling holy shit 'unbearable'. 

Currently I think of showers as "jump in the river" experiences. You jump in the river and it's shockingly cold, but then you just have to deal with it and endure it. Every night. Or I can recall and emulate the legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi who supposedly stood under freezing cold waterfalls to steel his discipline. Probably not every night. 

Or I can visualize plunging into cold, ocean surf.

Another way of looking at it is from a mindfulness practice perspective. Living life we habituate ourselves for most part to gravitate towards comfort and avoid unpleasantness as much as we can. Yet according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead that attitude may help keep people in the cycle of death and rebirth. In particular during the second death bardo, the bardo of "reality", it is said we are faced with bright, bedazzling, blinding apparitions of colored lights so intense as to be fairly characterized as terrifying, but if we recognize them as the nature of our own minds, that can lead to enlightenment (whatever that means). However if we fear the lights and flee from them (downwards) towards comforting dull lights, we are running towards another rebirth in this world of suffering where we have to go through birth, disease, old age and death anew. The dull lights represent various levels of lives we can live, according to our karma. Going for the comforting dull lights is the natural, habitual tendency of the vast majority who have not been introduced to or trained in the bardo death practices.

I find that certainly applicable. My entire life now is all about maintaining a dull comfort and an uneasy, ultimately untenable, stability. The day-to-day conveyor belt is about comfort. Staying close to my bathroom because of gastro issues is about comfort. Recovering from whatever minor disruptions to my daily routine is just about comfort. This is all fine as I consider my life already over. There's nothing I need to do in life, nothing I want to do, so this is my personal version of palliative care as I wait to die. 

No hot water and cold water showers is not in my control. Apparently I'm the only one affected as no one else has called the landlord to complain about it. Unless . . . they're all like me? If they're all like me, who am I to complain? But as long as it's not in my control and is not a wrist-slicing disturbance, apply it as practice. Cold water showers is looking at and facing the blinding bright colored lights and not wanting hot water, which is the dull comforting lights leading back to rebirth. 

On the other hand, it might get old real fast as temperatures continue to decline. And I have to be honest with myself, cold water showers in cold weather suck. However I choose to cope with them, they're annoying, frustrating and remind me of the big joke that is my life (Really? The Universe can't send me cancer or liver failure and instead turns off my hot water? The Universe is #worstlandlordever). 

It's still unknown whether this will be a moderate winter or particularly cold; either which is possible. If the unpleasantness ranges into first world unbearableness, I might have to resort to setting up my space heater to point into the bathroom during showers. I don't know if that'll work, but at least the air will be warmed after shivering under the cold water is over.

Guitar god Eddie Van Halen died on October 6. And I just found out that the Van Halen brothers are essentially Asian American! What the fuck?!

How I didn't know Eddie and Alex are Asian American is pretty frickin' mind-blowing. Their father was Dutch and mother Indonesian. I don't know a single American with one white parent and one Asian parent who doesn't consider him or herself Asian American, although I'm sure they're out there. Maybe the Van Halen brothers?! Maybe the Van Halen brothers themselves kept quiet about their Indonesian heritage for whatever reason which is why I never knew about it. I knew they were Dutch and that Van Halen is a Dutch name, either from reading it in a magazine or hearing it from a classmate who read it in a magazine. Not a word about Indonesia and I remember a classmate wondering why Alex had "Chinese eyes" in a rare photo where he wasn't wearing sunglasses. Brother Eddie looked "normal" so that was the end of our junior high inquisition.

Furthermore, in the past few days it has come to my attention that the brothers had immigrated from the Netherlands at an old enough age to be passably fluent in Dutch (young enough to not have a Dutch accent), enough to give interviews in American-accented Dutch. They were at least bilingual!! (I haven't come across anything definitive indicating they didn't know any Indonesian from their mother, maybe they did but mum's the word on the Asianyay ingthay). 

I grew up in upper-middle class, white suburbia where racism definitely existed but wasn't horribly overt or physically violent as it was for the Van Halen brothers. We idiotically didn't listen to black music and that closed-mindedness extended to sexism as we stupidly didn't think girls could rock and ignored the obvious evidence that they could. It also made us Grade A assholes making fun of foreigners and thinking a death-metal band called Stormtroopers of Death with an album titled Speak English or Die was a hoot. What a bunch of fucking idiots we were and represented. I'm not proud of it. I did my best to fit in and in return they did their best to ignore that I looked like the people we were making fun of (no one turned and looked to me at that Alex Van Halen "Chinese eyes" remark). 

If we had seen videos of our rock heroes speaking a foreign language, I bet our narrow little minds would've been blown! They're foreigners! But not nearly as much as if we had learned they were Asian American. I don't know what I would've done with that information. I probably would've distanced myself from it and dismissed it. At that age and in that place, there was no Asian pride, no "Asian American", and Indonesia wasn't even really part of Asia anyway, at least not the important part. There wasn't even awareness of racism; I didn't learn about it until college and only then did I realize it was there all along like rigpa. 

I'm very proud that Van Halen was the first ever rock concert I went to, still in junior high. Diver Down Tour, Brendan Byrne Arena in the Meadowlands, NJ. I remember being in the stands and not believing I was in the same space as Eddie Van Halen! He was right there before my eyes with his trademark 500-watt smile doing his bouncy multiple scissor kick jumps on the raised platform stage left and David Lee Roth with his acrobatic, martial arts kicks and infamous ass-less chaps. 

My first rock concert and there were Asian Americans in the band! In later pictures, his Indonesian heritage is facially more apparent and he could pass for an elder Southeast Asian gentleman. Alex can stop wearing sunglasses all the time.

If I knew they were Asian American, I probably would've made more of an effort to remain a fan after the first white guy David Lee Roth was fired. My mind would've been blown 30 years earlier as my Asian American awareness dawned and remembered Eddie and Alex were "half Indonesian". I had trouble getting into their post-DLR sound and didn't feel like chasing it. Even now in my iTunes collection I have all six David Lee Roth-fronted studio albums, but only two songs with Sammy Hagar. And then after the second white guy Sammy Hagar was fired/quit, the name Van Halen became more associated with ridiculous, ego-driven drama and I didn't need that kind of instability in my life. 

I couldn't say I was a fan anymore when the third (fourth?) white guy Michael Anthony was fired (white people being fired by Asians is a comic thrill you only understand if you laughed when Apu gleefully hired Homer to work at the Quik-E-Mart), but I couldn't imagine any legitimate reason for the bassist to be fired. They could spin the revolving door with singers, but Michael Anthony's solid playing and stratospheric backing vocal was the third key to the Van Halen sound. The only reason that makes sense is nepotism, Eddie wanted his son Wolfgang in the band and that's not a legitimate reason. May as well change the band's name to "Eddie & the Family Van Halen" (that would've taken balls). I dunno, maybe Wolfgang was too young at that point for this theory to hold, but when he was finally recruited, it didn't look good. At least Eddie may have been clearing the way for Wolfgang.

I actually have Van Halen's entire catalog of studio albums on my computer (even the reviled Van Halen III), unscrupulously downloaded many moons ago from some unscrupulous Brazilian or Russian site that had them all just in case I might someday be interested. They aren't loaded onto my iTunes and so I have to specifically choose to listen to them like in the old days of LPs and CDs, which is rare for me to do and most of it has gone unlistened to until recently. I have to admit the music is consistently good, Eddie and Alex kick ass no matter who is singing. But aside from them I'm still not thrilled by the writing or what's on top (nothing against Sammy, I wish I liked it more).

One of the greatest, game-changing electric guitarists of all time was black. The other was . . . Asian American?! I'm still trying to get my head around that one. I was born too late to appreciate Jimi Hendrix, but then got it when I realized what he did to electric guitar in the 60s is analogous to what Eddie Van Halen did in the 70s. I just couldn't hear it because I didn't experience it and everyone was standing on Jimi's shoulders by the time I came of age. They were like a two-stage rocket with Jimi taking off into space and then Eddie blasting into hyperdrive 10 years later.

14 min. clip from the Mean Street Tour supporting Fair Warning, a year and a half before I saw them. No ass-less chaps, but that's quite a bulge Diamond Dave is sporting.

For the past several months I've been focusing morning sitting on the Tibetan Buddhist concepts of sem and rigpa. Both of those terms are translated as "mind", but distinguish between different types of mind. Sem is mind as manifested in our perceived reality and it is also divided in two. One aspect of sem mind is how we subjectively perceive things, what is received through our senses and how our brains integrate them and interpret reality. The other aspect of sem is what's out there, what's being perceived and is also a product of mind. It's not to say that without us being here that it would disappear, that would be a misinterpretation of it being "product of the mind", but rather establishing the non-duality between reality and mind – what's "out there" IS our mind. That takes a bit to get one's sem around. 

The focus on sem is also good for returning the wandering discursive mind back to the breath – Zen focus on breathing – that I perennially wrangle with. I start by identifying breath as being representative of sem, so as soon as I think "sem" my mind immediately goes to my breath and the sensation of breathing and then that expands to focusing on all senses and what they're doing, as well as the discursive mind and the thoughts which are also sem. It sometimes takes a while for the thought of sem to trigger the focus, sometimes it's there from the start or even before starting (although once it came to me literally right before the 46-minute timer went off (sem! *beep beep beep*), which wasn't ideal). Doesn't matter. And once the focus on the perceiving is there, it spreads to the objects of perception, the other side of sem.

Rigpa is a more elusive concept of mind; it is mind as the ground of all being. Sem mind is merely the projection or manifestation of rigpa. Sem is how mind appears as our perceived reality and with what and how we interact in our lives, but rigpa is the true mind, the true ground of existence. Imagine seeing the trees (sem) but being unable to see the forest (rigpa), or the waves but unable to see the ocean. You look as hard as you can and you can see the trees and the waves, but for the life of you you fail at the challenge of seeing the forest or the ocean. The problem with the analogy is that we can see the forest and the ocean, but that's also the conceptual difficulty of rigpa where everything is rigpa, rigpa is imbued through everything around us, but we can't see it or point to it. 

Rigpa can't be learned or taught, but must be experienced, it is said, and experiencing rigpa is akin to enlightenment. And as I understand it, it is the "clear light" or "pristine cognition" (or many other terms) described in the death-point between in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead. There's a point in the death process where all beings experience enlightenment but it is so subtle that beings generally blow through it without any recognition or notice of it. It is possible to train oneself to try to recognize it, and enlightenment can be achieved during the death-point bardo if successful. 

Of course, not having a teacher I haven't received any instructions on it, but maybe while alive keeping a meditative focus on the understanding that rigpa is life and reality itself all around us and we are experiencing it, just not noticing it, will help recognize it when encountered in death. During the death process, not succumbing to the fear and tumult of the death process and concentrating on recognizing the clear light/pristine cognition so that when it occurs it's the most obvious thing because we just lived our entire life marinating in it. It's something that becomes obvious at that point along with the recognition, finally, that it's been there all along. 

Both of these focuses on sem and rigpa are ideally maintained or returned to throughout the day and not just for the cushion.

Recognition of experiencing rigpa is described as something very familiar, like the meeting of mother and child. I hope I can be forgiven if that analogy is somewhat lost on me. I mean, yeah, familiar – I've never failed to recognize my parents whenever they or I came out of customs at the airport no matter how many years have passed, but any implication of a pleasant familiar reunion would be pushing it. I suppose the analogy may have been a sentimental expression of what Tibetans believed was universal. Even Paul Simon wrote a song about it, so OK, fine. 

Me? I'd go for a familiarity that's less sentimental and perhaps even more universal than the mother and child reunion that's only a motion away. I'm thinking the familiarity more like whenever we wake up and we know who we are and that this is reality. We aren't repeatedly freaked whenever we wake up wondering who or where we are. It's just here immediately, not frightening, not necessarily comforting, just fact and possibly profoundly familiar if you think about it. I also like that familiarity being of oneself as similar to The Conference of the Birds when the thirty birds reach their stated goal of meeting the Simorgh, which we find can be translated to "thirty birds" in I think Persian or Farsi. You reach the clear light/pristine cognition state and its basically a mirror, yourself. 

2019 mix CDs

Yes indeedy, yet another addition to my vanity project of making a mix CD for every year I've been alive! And same as since 2012, it's a double-disc collection filled with K-pop! Yay! Of course there's no reason on multiple levels for doing this. There's no reason for most of my life, what's your point? The CD medium itself is an artificial and/or obsolete construct. Who even uses CDs anymore? (oh yeah, me) But for me the physical limit is important (if allowing for a second CD can be called "limiting"), as is the concept of a "collection" with track order, segues and flow and contours. Who even thinks that way anymore? (oh yeah, me)

What a long, strange trip it's been in just these mix CDs. The extreme left turn that is K-pop so late in my life still confounds me to the point that I still can't dismiss mystical attribution of future life resonance – that my next life will be in Korea. FLR might also be why I'm primarily attracted to girl groups, whereas if it was just about the music genre I should be equally accepting of the boy groups. I'm drawing analogies with passages in the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead that describe the bardo of rebirth whereby individuals that are to be reborn as male will feel jealousy towards the father and attraction to the mother and vice versa for females (that's just the basic template while, as my theory goes, genetics also play a part; the gender-"determining" experience in the bardo primarily affects subjective identity and may influence physically being born one gender or another (or yet another these days) but can't counter genetics dictating otherwise. It explains a lot if you think about it). So the Korean thing may be a resonance as to where I'm to be reborn, while the focus on the female may be sticking with current karma that I'll be born male (getting XX chromosomes notwithstanding). What the hell am I talking about?

Back on planet earth I've tried to explain the K-pop in other ways – that it's about songwriting, really good melodies, tight backing-track arrangements, the progressions, the gestalt and other musical/production attributes – but I feel like I'm trying to legitimize something that doesn't need legitimizing. I've always trusted my musical tastes and rarely have I made the blunder of thinking something was good only to realize there really wasn't much substance (mostly when I was trying too hard). But I suppose maybe none of this matters if it's future life resonance at play. It's no longer my musical tastes in this lifetime, but echoes from a future that hasn't happened yet or is supposed to be happening if I had kept to script and departed for that life long ago. My music listening has been hijacked. And I've mentioned before that the Korean thing is the future life resonance, not K-pop. The K-pop is because of love of music in this current life. In future lifetimes I may not be interested in music at all. Theoretically, if I had some other strong interest, it would be some other aspect of Korea that would be inexplicably manifesting.

I wonder what I would've been listening to for the past decade if K-pop hadn't happened. Anything good coming out of the west aside from Hamilton? I haven't noticed anything. I wouldn't need anything new since all the music I acquired in those hard-drive exchanges in 2009-2010 may have taken 10 years to get familiar with; as I mentioned, it's good stuff, I like it, but I frustratingly just don't know it. 

*sigh* Music show video clips from 2019 still had live audiences. Because of the CCP pandemic, there have been no audiences for the music shows in 2020 and there's a palpable difference in energy without the screaming audiences and fanchants. 

Disc One: (zip download)

1. All Mine (Coast of Azure) (GWSN) (choreo video)
2. Bing Bing (Nature)
3. Uh-Oh ((g)I-dle)
4. Umpah Umpah (Red Velvet)
5. Tiki-Taka (99%) (Weki Meki)
6. Butterfly (LOOΠΔ) (music video) (choreo vid)
7. %% Eung Eung (Apink)
8. One Blue Night (Jiyeon (ex-T-ara)) (lyric video) (audio only)
9. Sunrise (Gfriend)
10. Bbyong (Saturday) (choreo vid)
11. Well Come to the BOM (Berry Good) (official audio)
12. Kill You (Hot Place) (lyric video) (audio only)
13. Hip (Mamamoo)
14. Dalla Dalla (ITZY)
15. How You Doin'? (EXID) (lyric video) (official audio)
16. Lalalay (Sunmi (ex-Wonder Girls))
17. 1, 2 (Lee Hi) (unofficial upload) (lyric video)
18. 5 More Minutes (DIA)
19. Sugar Pop (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (lyric video) (music students react)
20. Turn It Up (Twice) (lyric video) (official audio)
21. yeah yeah (Kisum) (audio only)
22. Guerilla (Oh My Girl)
23. This Winter (Berry Good)

Disc Two:
1. Picky Picky (Weki Meki)
2. Woowa (DIA)
3. Devil (CLC)
4. Thumbs Up (Momoland) (choreo video)
5. Hakuna Matata (DreamNote) (choreo video)

6. Late Autumn (Heize) (lyric video) (official audio)

7. Hush (Everglow) (lyric video) (official audio)

8. Underwater Love (Oh My Girl) (lyric video) (official audio)

9. Kkili Kkili (G-reyish)
10. Fever (Gfriend) (choreo video)

11. Boogie Up (Cosmic Girls (WJSN)) (full-stage fancam)

12. You Don't Know Me (Yoomin (ex-Melody Day)) (audio only)

13. New Day (Ladies' Code) (lyric video) (audio only)
14. Hocus Pocus (Bvndit)
15. Fancy (Twice)
16. Lion ((g)I-dle)
17. XX (Bolbbalgan4) (lyric video) (official audio)
18. Moonlight (Lovelyz)
19. Goblin (Sulli (ex-f(x)))
20. Recipe ~ For Simon (GWSN) (lyric video) (official audio)
21. LP (Red Velvet) (lyric video) (official audio)
22. Memories (Apink) (lyric video) (official audio)
23. Love RumPumPum (fromis_9) (unofficial stage mix)
24. Ruddy (Cherry Bullet) (official audio)

2018 mix CDs

Sometimes I still get helplessly wrapped up in negativity and nothing seems to be going my way and everything everyone is doing annoys me, and even traffic lights are conspiring against me whether I'm walking, on bike, bus or MRT. I know it's beyond irrational and is downright stupid, but there I am stewing in grumpiness and being peeved at everything around me. Mindfulness practice is supposed to kick in and I'm supposed to look at this from the outside and be aware of it. I'm supposed to look carefully at each element and rationally ask myself what is annoying? Is there something inherent in this that's annoying? Is this a permanent condition that is worth my energy or being negative about? 

Nah, that's not working, I already said I knew it was stupid and irrational but the feelings and thoughts are still there, I'm still stewing. So then Vajrayana-related practices kick in. Accept the negative feelings and thoughts and work with them, don't try to get rid of them, don't try to rationalize them. This is a mandala I'm traveling through where everything has a purpose and there's always something to work on. 

I ended up with the toxic negativity becoming a big fart cloud surrounding me. All I could do is wait for it to dissipate, but for the meanwhile I had to sit in this cloud of my own stinking fart. That's important, not someone else's flatulence because that may be too much. That's just disgusting, but we don't mind our own farts even though they stink and we wouldn't choose to make a scratch 'n sniff out of it. When we were kids we would run for the hills if someone else farted, but our own farts we would lean in and take a whiff. As adults sometimes we'd try to figure out what it was we had eaten. Not me, I mean, I don't do that but some people do. Probably. I think I saw it in a movie.

So there I'd be on the backseat of a crowded bus, miserable and grumpy with a facial expression like I just smelled shit because I'm surrounded in a cloud of fart, hoping and waiting for it to dissipate, but at least no one else is bothering me anymore. 

All I have to do is not go to the bank. It's that simple. I don't need to do something, I just need to not do something. I'm expert at not doing something. Don't transfer anymore money from the States and face the fact that all I have left is all there is. It's a little bit like John's WTF I've Got Cancer? blog when he decided to stop chemo. He had Stage IV terminal colon cancer so he accepted statistically that he was going to die. Chemo just gave him increments of extra time to live, but he was never willing to sacrifice quality of life (subjective and fluidly assessed) to live longer. And it was when he decided dealing with the U.S. health care-pharmaceutical juggernaut was too complicated, farcical and frustrating, and that the emotional, mental effect on his quality of life was intolerable, he said 'fuck it', no more chemo. Even when the drugs came through, he was resolved to not take them. Fuck it. He was done with all that.

I think I've reached that level of resignation where it is no longer worth it to keep trying to get injections into my bank account that allow me to live a little longer, just to maintain . . . *this* (you have to imagine me spreading my hands in sarcastic presentation of my studio apartment that represents all my shattered hopes and, um, dreams). Going to the bank and dealing with the joyless and permanently cranky workers in the foreign exchange was always unpleasant. I'm sure not a single one of them listens to show tunes. It was also personally humiliating since it's not my money, I'm just mooching, and I'm constantly bitching and moaning about my worthless life when suicide is my affirmative goal. Even I can't sympathize with myself!

I should now consider the current remaining reserve funds definitely finite. We have loomage. Mind you, I haven't crossed the point of know return yet, meaning if I went to the bank today I wouldn't run out of reserves before the expected 2-4 months for funds to go through. So I'm still just spouting theory. But the more I just don't do anything, it will become reality. All I have to do is not do anything. Don't even think, even though thinking about it does remind me of the miserable experience of going to the bank and how I'd rather not. 

And remember (me, myself) I don't even want to be here anymore, I don't like being me, and any moment I focus on during the day just reminds me how worthless and undesirable every bit of this is (in a non-negative, not-depressing paradigm, believe it or not). Really the only thing I'm attached to is the habit. The habit of being me, of existence. The habit of being attached, the habit that resets every day just to go around and do it again; every day's little annoyances of things not going quite how I want, fixing the bits that I can and bits where they turn out fine, then shower, wash the shot glass, brush-a da teeth, lights out and reset. It's great! Just not my aspiration.

Oh yeah, and the alcoholism. Nothing going right there anytime soon. Or ever at all. You know what? I'ma take issue with alcoholism. I look up alcoholism and read up on it and I really don't fall under the definition of alcoholic. I only accede to the label to avoid being accused of being in denial. But no one's accusing me of anything, no one's even here, so I opine for the record that I wasn't really alcoholic.

Heavy drinker? That's harder to dismiss. I ration a third of a bottle of liquor per day, plus limited dipping into reserve bottles which also happens every day after the third runs out, usually the next morning. I look at a third of a bottle and it just doesn't look like much. But then I asked someone if he thought it was a lot, and for him he said that was a LOT. Mind you, I don't know about now but he was a pothead when I knew him, as much as a Ph.D.-former-NASA-employee astrophysicist can be a pothead. He now sells kalimbas for a living and the Grateful Dead is his favorite band of all time as much as Genesis is mine (he only quit NASA because they shut down their Socorro, NM, field station and he didn't want to relocate to D.C. to stay with the agency). I don't think he was a drinker, but he wasn't substance-free.

I'll settle for heavy drinker. I drink to detriment in that I can't deny ill health effects of alcohol consumption. I'm pretty sure my engorged gut is alcohol-related ascites without going to doctor and facing a bevy of tests saying that's probably so. And I'll attribute my gastrointestinal issues to alcohol, too. Alcohol wreaks havoc on the liver and the liver provides bile to the intestines to help with digestion, so if my liver function is presumably being compromised, then it's not a stretch to think that the gastrointestinal issues are alcohol related, even without an examination and a bevy of tests to probably tell me the obvious. 

I'm trying to not get paralyzed, confused and directionless by the discord in my psychology. It's annoying. For the past few months I've been letting myself get too wrapped up in worldly affairs, letting them get to my head and my ego, when ultimately those things are of the nature of "none of my business".

The root of the mess in the U.S. is obvious, so much of it could've been prevented or managed by strong, clear leadership. There's no use trying to sum it up beyond that or analyze it or even express anything about it. No one cares. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one and thinks everyone else's stinks. There's a lot of suffering and it would be good to be compassionate about it, but there's also a lot of stupidity which makes compassion a challenge. And it's none of my business.

On this side of the world we have the China evil. There's too much to say about that so I won't even bother. I've been saying too much in YouTube comments, which I know is a stupid thing in itself to do, but fortunately nothing I've said has gotten any response so hopefully none of it was read. I only posted analysis supporting or supplementing something specific in the video where most comments are the typical and predictable rhetoric and vitriol against the CCP, which is fine and good in showing how much support there is against them. Still, none of my business.

But posting comments on YouTube is stupid and I stopped, mostly because I realized whatever I have to say is coming from a place of Big Ego. Is what I have to say sooo important? Stop. Actually I've been doing an affirmative anti-ego practice of drafting comments if the compulsion arises and then deleting them after asking if it's something that really needs to be said (almost never). The Big Ego makes me think I have something to express, but then I slap it down and that time I spent was wasted; the price of being tempted by Big Ego. That is my business!

As offensive an affront as China's CCP has unleashed upon the world amid the pandemic they themselves started, their domestic situation has been worse! Relentless rainfall and massive flooding, droughts and locusts (read: Biblical) wiping out crops, threats of a dam collapsing that could kill millions, grain stores rotting and the threat of famine, skies in Beijing turning dark as night in the middle of the afternoon, snow in June, large coronavirus-shaped hail falling, dogs and cats mating, not to mention the political arena of reports of concentration camps to wipe out the Muslim Uighur population in northwest China and reports of live organ harvesting finally reaching the west and being accepted as credible, internal power struggles and rampant corruption in the Communist Party . . . I'm telling you, this is what you're missing if you're not following the China YouTube channels* and I'm hardly scratching the surface!

But just the natural disasters besetting China, some people mentioning the Mandate of Heaven being lost (a Chinese history thing), others claiming God is angry at China or that the apocalypse is nigh. But really, it is hard not to view the natural disasters happening all at once in China as not being supernatural. If there is supernatural attribution, I would imagine it not being God, but decades of Tibetan lamas who were tortured and murdered in Chinese prisons. High-level lamas who "decided" to delay reincarnating, and remain in the bardo in-between states to try to enact change on earthly realms. That can't be considered lightly. I imagine it would be extremely difficult for the spiritual realm to directly affect the earthly realm. The spiritual realm is energy, the earthly realm matter. We already know how difficult it is to convert matter into energy (E=mc²) but we can do it. Energy to matter? It would involve massive amounts of energy for even small effects, but I play with the idea that's what the lamas have been trying to do for decades (in human time frames), trying to concentrate energy to have physical manifestation in the world in the form of unleashing natural catastrophe upon China. It doesn't violate vows of compassion because it recognizes the need for extreme suffering by ordinary Chinese people for there to be change. It's not revenge or anger, but recognition of the need for suffering towards a compassionate goal. My mention of physics is a joke, not even a "stranger things have happened" consideration. Just an analogy of an idea.

Ultimately for me personally, these are all earthly, worldly matters that fall completely in the sphere of "none of my business".

* China Uncensored (sarcastic and snarky but serious) Hearsay that companion channel is pro-Trump.
NTD - China in Focus (the most mainstream-style news) Turned into a pro-Trump channel at elections, i.e., unable to maintain objective reporting.

Crossroads with Joshua Phillipps (good analysis into what's going on with certain news stories) Realized it was an egregious and shameless pro-Trump channel when he defended Trump as "not a racist" and that he was merely taken out of context.
China Observer - Vision Times (good analysis and including historical context) Nope, pro-Trump/conspiracy theories

WION (India-based international news currently covering a lot about China because of the China threat)

This is a pretty miserable life I'm wasting away. I'm just rehashing here, nothing new (August always seems to be the "wake-up call" month). There's little to nothing redeeming about my being here; little of any real worth. There's little that I actually like about being here or being me; it's just habit and attachment, two things Buddhism specifically tries to tackle on the road to enlightenment. I profess to not even want to be here, and yet here I am long beyond my expiration date. All of this old news.

I'm starting to wonder whether mindfulness practice in my specific situation is actually counter-productive (I'm sure I've gone through this before). Everyday I've been able to identify a moment when I emphatically think this sucks or I hate this or fuck me or fiddlesticks! (normal people call it "life"). And yet mindfulness practice immediately identifies those as descriptive and not feelings to attach to as significant or permanent. Any negativity borne out of those sentiments gets immediately dialed down. And as disgruntled or annoyed as I get or scowl-y my eyebrows furrow, the benchmark of my life is how equilibrium snaps back and somehow everyday starts anew pretty much in the same vaguely intolerably tolerable place (even my broken bike became serviceable again, as after the seat tube completely tore I merely knocked the adjustment clamp off with a wrench and jammed the seat post into the tube. I just can't adjust the height).

I'd been watching the HBO show Westworld whose third season aired earlier this year, and my life experience is what are referred to as "loops" in Westworld lingo. Loops are repeated programs for the AI to live out in the show, variation provided by the human guests, but it turns out humans in the outside world are also pretty much living out programmed loops believing they have freewill, and it doesn't take much imagination to extend that out into the real outside world we live in and realize we're more or less doing something similar, believing we have freewill. 

Mindfulness practice seems to be keeping me in my loop, which means I'm doing it wrong because I think mindfulness practice itself is pretty solid and the pathways to freedom well laid out. It's only wrong because of my "deviant" goal; something very different. Mindfulness practice is good for people trying to stay alive because it's a means to stay alive, sane, reasonable, productive and hopefully compassionate. If that's not the goal, then it's not so great. Ergo moi.

Not just mindfulness practices, but teachings of Mahamudra ("great seal" (not walrus)) of Buddhism's Vajrayana also play a part. A central realization being that practice is anything and everything here right now. Whatever is being experienced at any given moment, practice is applied; perhaps "living in the moment" in Zen terms, but also not quite. It's not a flaky term of art to chill out, but a realization that requires disciplined time sitting on a cushion, I think. I'm not saying I have any realization, but I also have to be careful to not unnecessarily downplay my practice in the name of humility. Without a teacher to tell me whether what I'm doing is on or off, I need to be positive and optimistic about what I'm doing or else I'm totally wasting my time and that would be idiotic.

So general mindfulness practice makes me put my miserable life into perspective and keeps everyday on an even keel, and Mahamudra philosophy pushes me to practice in a way that welcomes the misery and use it as applied practice, while all I want is to be decidedly miserable and do something in accordance with that!

This is all just rehashing, reviewing the situation, even just marking time. I don't expect anything to come out of dishing through this anew, maybe it's just renewing hope that some day something will.

It feels like the month-of-July-long heat has "broken" for whatever that's worth. It means walking outside and thinking Oh, this isn't that bad, meaning it doesn't feel like I'm about to spontaneously combust. And that's all it means. It's still wretched hot, but optimistically knowing it could be worse. These are the standards we're working with here.

And my daily-use street bike effectively "broke". Of all things, it was the seat tube that broke near the top where the seat post inserts into the tube. Can't be fixed. It's because I set the seat high like on my road bike to get the most power out of leg extensions (who thinks like that for a clunker bike?). But low-end street bikes aren't constructed like road bikes and setting the seat high basically created a lever point near the top of the tube and after about or over 10 years of pressure on that point, the steel just ripped. This wouldn't have happened if I set the seat lower, I shouldn't wonder. I'd never've thunk it. There must be a metaphor in here somewhere.

I can still ride it standing on the pedals so it still has limited use (alcohol runs to the mega-mart), but it's no longer a comfortably assumed daily-use ride. It means my daily routine has to be re-tooled for not having my own bike and utilizing Taipei's YouBike bike-share. And walking.

Unlike if my computer broke, I'm not even thinking of buying a new bike. This is a permanent disturbance in my dearly-held daily routine, but not a fatal one, just another brick in the wall. I'll try working with it and assess the annoyance factor. But it hints at how fragile I'm treating my life and routine. This isn't going to make me definitively decide to end things, but shows how things can be shaken, and at some point something's gonna change and shake so much that I'll supposedly decide that's it. Everything changes, I'm waiting to see how much change is too much for me, short of funds running out, having to move, losing running water or any number of things that trigger the fack-fackitty-fackaroo.

This kind of bike is commonly used by anyone in Taiwan. I wouldn't be caught dead riding something like this in the U.S., as temptingly intriguing as a sight that might be (the dead part, not the bike part). Note the height of the seat. The seat post doesn't go very far into the seat tube, and every time I grabbed the back of the seat to maneuver the bike manually it put strain at that juncture. If the seat were lower, the pressure would've been more spread out along the tube. 

Detail of the seat tube steel rip. If I grab the seat from the back, the whole thing levers forward and I imagine it wouldn't take much force to just tear it off completely. I've found if I lift the seat from the front to maneuver the bike manually, it's fine. I also found that I could lightly ease myself onto the seat for balance and that's more stable than riding standing on the pedals. I won't try putting my full weight on it anymore, though. 

Dragging myself through these days, appropriate because these days are quite a drag.

It's not that I'm not trying to throw something, anything, up on the computer screen, just nothing I throw is sticking. I've tried multiple ways of saying any number of things, but there's just not a lot to be said of these days. And this isn't gonna be any better.

Stupidity in the U.S. and the complete lack of unity or leadership? China emerging as world power evil as the CCP reveals its true face in pushing back against increasing global realization that China has ambitions for absolute world dominance by any means necessary (pretty much acknowledged fact through leaked internal memos) is a dick? World affairs are not my forte and the less I say the better. Saying any more about these things would just be a drag.

Zooming in to a more local view and, ugh, just hot. Daily life dictated by how to react and deal with the heat. Daily afternoon thunderstorms contribute to the rigidity of routine regarding where I am when. It's a drag. Time to buy some women's clothing, the kind lumberjacks wear.

Zooming into micro, I'm wondering if I really may be done with all this and a next serious attempt may be at hand. I think it's been over or about 10 years since the last serious attempt and I wonder how serious that was. Meh, I thought it was a serious attempt back then and I'll leave it at that without over-thinking myself. And a 10-year gap doesn't mean it hasn't been ever-present. Not writing about it constantly just meant I didn't want to constantly repeat myself redundantly over and over again. Unlike my jokes.

I mentioned before that my financial status quo would require a visit to the bank in June, and I haven't done that. And I don't think I will or can unless I get another attempt under my belt. The timeline has to be: attempt → fail → go to the bank. The important thing for me is the attempt. The important thing to note is the assumption of the fail. I'm just yappin', which just might be taking the edge off feeling the need to do it.

The thing about an attempt to succeed is that I can't be thinking particularly clearly, and recently I've found my thinking vague, scattered and unclear. I'm not even sure what that means. Writing this sounds kinda clear and suggests this will all pass, but even that is part of the fuzzy and spiraling and confusing and lacking in stability or solidity. These are good things!

Whatever, I have no idea. I said this wasn't going to be any better than the nothing I haven't been able to get out in the first place. 

Oh, thank god I was wrong last week about "summer heat kicking in". We're in a veritable, this-is-no-drill heatwave, government declared with warnings raised island-wide of consecutive days of 100°+ temps and to look out for pets and grandmas in distress. If this was something normal I'd have to say again fack-fackity-fackaroo! Very big NÖPES on the bearable scale. We've already had the hottest day of the year so far and the 2nd hottest day in June ever. Sleep has even been unsettled and I keep the A/C remote next to my pillow along with my stereo remote (I still can't fall asleep without background music, such is the drama in my life).

Something about a stationary front off the north coast of Taiwan locking in hot weather for the rest of the week with developing moisture allowing for possible afternoon showers. Oh, and I misspoke about daily afternoon squalls related to the plum rains. Plum rains are just copious and unpredictable through May and June. Daily afternoon squalls are regular summer patterns in some years. Afternoon rain could mean respite, but in a heatwave it might mean humidity to clear all plans and find some place air-conditioned and hunker down. Humidity to hope for a CCP virus outbreak that sends the country into lockdown just to sit in front of A/C or a fan all day. The worst is when it rains in the morning during the summer but then the sun comes out and all the water on the ground evaporates into a 10-foot thick invisible pall of humidity that just hangs over the ground.

There was an annular solar eclipse this past Sunday during the heatwave-when-I-didn't-know-yet-it-was-a-heatwave that wound its way from Africa all the way to the Pacific O ending after crossing Taiwan. My brother actually sent me an email last month before I knew anything about it, but it turned out to be a southern Taiwan event. As small an island as Taiwan is, journeying to the south from Taipei still requires logistics and planning beyond the scope of my daily life. Although I didn't expect anything in Taipei, right when annularity occurred I just happened to be in a store looking out glass panes and noted that it looked like I was looking through tinted glass. Then I realized I was looking out an open door and it was an eerie darkness outside with sunshine and shadows still clearly delineated. I stepped outside for the few minutes it lasted. Other people had also noticed and had their phones out as well as cars with automatic headlights that turned on. I'm not sure what to make of it. Was it a partial eclipse in Taipei that wasn't covered anywhere in the news? The sun was bright in the sky, but on the ground everything darkened for just a few minutes. It must have been a partial eclipse, otherwise there should've been no effect at all. Such are my powers of logic.

Summer heat has officially kicked in and the early hints suggest it's gonna be another ridiculously blazing hell hot summer. I managed to not turn on the air conditioner until June. By then I was already suffering the heat at times, and even then I'd only turn it on for short periods to take off the edge. And that's what I've been doing until today – I'd reach a point of misery that I felt justified in turning it on for 15-20 minutes.

Today was the first day of summer pattern air con usage whereby I turn it on and set the timer for an hour. I'll still usually turn it off before the hour is up, and that will be sufficient for the next hour or two until I fire it up and repeat the process, balancing comfort with saving energy. Again, I remind myself how lucky I am to have air conditioning and the liberty to turn it on at will, which may be why I also try to show restraint.

I look at the 10-day forecast and note that the plum rains with their daily (but unpredictable) afternoon squalls are probably done and the stretch of clear, sunny days and roasting temperatures are just plain scary (every day highs in the high 90°s (feels like over 110°) and no lows below 80°). I'll need to be wary of heat-related health issues when I'm out and put a strict limit on the radius I can ride my bike to go anywhere, beyond which I have to take public transpo. I need to activate the app in my brain to recognize when I need to take a hydration stop at a convenient store to avoid getting into trouble. This is all very obvious to regular people possessing "intelligence", but I like living on the edge, surprised I haven't fallen off of it.

Taiwan has reached 56 days without any domestic spread of the CCP virus. That's four consecutive 14-day quarantine periods, eight weeks, without any domestic cases. A single quarantine period was deemed sufficient for any cases of the CCP virus to manifest, although a further 7 days of self-health monitoring was recommended to be sure. So after four quarantine periods, who is there in the population that may unknowingly have it and could still be spreading it? Logic and the numbers, admittedly I'm weak at both, should indicate ZERO. There is no one in the general population who has it, so no one can spread it. With no one to spread it, no one can catch it, such are my powers of logic.

Theoretically, ALL restrictions across the board could be immediately dropped and people can fully return to life as normal. Where would a new case come from? Only from abroad, and indeed the only new cases have been returnees, and in the past 56 days I think they were all caught during the mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival and isolated for treatment.

I just gotta say, DAMN Taiwanese are a patient lot! In some countries which have pampered and privileged portions of their populations, people would have revolted after one quarantine period with zero cases of domestic spread. Of course Taiwan never went into lockdown and restrictions haven't been too onerous. I think people were just so grateful to avoid the suffering the CCP unleashed upon the rest of the world that they were willing to put up with the meager restrictions beyond what logic dictates. And if government action has kept us safe, might as well keep listening to them.

And as promised, the government has loosened many restrictions after 56 days of no domestic spread. Practically speaking, not ALL "restrictions" across the board are being dropped. The fact that many parts of the world are still grappling with the pandemic makes it wise and acceptable to maintain baseline disciplines and vigilance. Social distancing, mask wearing and proper hygiene are still strongly encouraged. I'm good with hygiene. I take a shower once a week whether I need it or not.

This is a K-pop post I thought of composing two years ago, but decided against it because of the likelihood I wouldn't "feel it" in the long run. It would be dated and I would be embarrassed having posted it. And it's still an embarrassing post, it's K-pop, but two years later I came across the videos and still liked the idea of the post, so maybe not something I'd regret. 

I imagined myself going back in time to my younger self in 2003 when I was living in the Mission District in San Francisco and all about indie rock: Modest Mouse, Versus, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, etc. And I would say to my younger self: watch this video and pay close attention to it and tell me what you think of it (I, of course, would know exactly what my younger self would think of it). 

My younger self would say, "Holy fucking shit, what the hell was that?", and I'd tease, "It's a 'K-pop' song (appropriate finger gestures). This song is hot in South Korea this very year, what'dya think?".

"Just 'what the hell?'" I'd reply, "It's pretty fucking weird, why are you showing me this? And what happened to your hair?!"

"Because", I'd say with a dramatic pause, ignoring the jab at my thinning hair, "15 years from now a K-pop girl group is gonna cover this song and you're gonna be all over it watching it dozens of times, geeking out about how super fun and cool it is. You'll even read the lyrics. And not only that, but you'll also already be into the entire genre by that time".

"Aw, that's fucking lame. Whatever. Well if you say it's gonna happen, then it's gonna happen. I know things change and I'll change, but it doesn't matter to me now, it still looks pretty stupid. Oh alright, show me the clip 15 years from now."  I knew I would take the bait (the two older gentleman in black in the audience are the original artists.)

I honestly have no idea how my 2003 self would have reacted to this video. I was a real snob, all about real musicians writing their own songs and playing their own instruments and I would have resisted this concocted pop confection, but I knew a hype beat and cool groove when I heard one and I think I couldn't deny it was pretty infectious from the get-go. I hope I could've managed a conciliatory, "Actually not that bad".

It's possible – I don't know how possible – that I might have thought if my future self traveled all that way to show me these videos, I may have been hinting something to myself. Maybe to not be closed-minded about music and be open to what can be done. Beyond that I don't know if my life course would've changed any. Probably not much, except knowing that time travel was possible *yawn*. And that I'd still be alive 15 years later *sigh*. Not that I'd change anything since I know I'd be stubborn like that. I probably wouldn't have figured out I wasn't hinting at anything at all and was just using time travel for inter-dimensional geeking out.

May 3, 2004, 2:28 p.m. - My San Francisco apartment in the Mission District. Band posters for Versus, Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse and Rainer Maria. The cat's name is Ransom, sitting atop a first generation Bose AM-5 satellite speaker cube. I'm told those original design Bose speakers are much better than what came later.