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I'm almost done my writeup of our New Year's trip to China... by which I mean that I haven't started at all. I've been drinking instead. As a tantalizer, I'll just say that China is nowhere near the Red State that everyone envisions. China is more like visiting your Asian friend's backyard where he unscrupulously cajoles you into buying his eight-year old bicycle with a rusty, broken chain and no handlebars. And when you take it for a ride it explodes in a fiery maelstrom of rabid consumerism and sexy dead pigeons. Then you buy a T-shirt to commemorate the experience. Wheee!

China was fucking rad.

On the home front, the topic of discussion lately has been "dealing with Korean girlfriends when they can't speak very much English and you can't speak any Hangul and all you ever do is punch each other like kindergartners and flirt by calling each other stupid or babo and these crazy bitches thrive on sexual inactivity." I have top operatives working on this cross-cultural mystery as we speak - stay tuned for a special expose report whenever Korean girls become more than a dualistic mystery of puritanical angst and schoolyard playfulness.

Oh, and of course who could forget Johnny Five, the new Deadhead teacher from the East Coast. I have talked to this man at least five times about what it would be like if "we had no skin man, just think what it would be like if only we didn't have any skin!" Every conversation is a bizarre amalgamation of spirituality and bat-shit freaking insanity and sometimes I have to make sure nobody's slipped something in my drink. I have seen Johnny Five dance slowly by himself, staring at the rusting ceiling of a basement bar, for at least forty-five minutes. I have seen his eyes gaping wide open, staring eerily as he enthusiastically imparts his wisdom, and I have seen his eyes riveted shut as he mumbles about pussy. It's a binary system - open or shut, no compromise or quarter given. Johnny Five is hilarious and I have no skin.

I've been reading Nabokov's Lolita in the sad absence of a new Harry Potter meganovel, and so far I have to say that I feel like a pedophile with every flip of the page. It's a poor feeling. It's not that I want to feel like a pedophile, and I'm sure people have read this book without feeling like a pedophile, but the ironclad fact remains that twelve-year old girls should not be fucked by scheming old men. End of story. I don't care how prose-y the telling of the story is, how rabidly emotional the language of love comes through. It's some awkward shit to plow through and I'm very glad that I'm not listening to the audiobook of Lolita in a room full of elderly women, as read by Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger would so do something like that too. Just to spite me. Anyway, watch out for Lolita or at least make sure you are not a burgeoning pedophile before taking it up. Read something edifying instead, like Margaret Atwood or Dr. Phil.

Today I wrote "Under the Sea" stories with the class I hate the most-est. As a sample story idea, I told them the basic plot outline of Disney's The Little Mermaid, except at the end the prince was killed by a gigantic robot and King Triton tried to avenge his death but accidentally impaled Ariel with his trident. It was well received by the boys, but the girls knew the real score. Everyone loves Disney over here. Then the kids got to work, crafting masterful tales of robot sharks and underwater zombies.

I used the time purchased by their silent scribbling to sketch a fearsome image of a murderous octopus named Dr. Timmons. The Legend of Dr. Timmons states that, once upon a time, the octagonal menace thirsted everlong for human blood and one day went on a quest to Sanbon, Korea to reap the torsos of a certain class of would-be authors. Dr. Timmons crept down the hallway of the fated school... further... further... almost there... silent... slithering... and then the final bell rang. His dinner would come to him, once they finished packing their bags and donning their jackets. He could wait, hidden outside the door. He had been waiting for years. Reveling in the lull, Dr. Timmons used one whiplike tentacle to adjust his eyepatch (oh yeah, he was an octopus dressed like a pirate) and grinned darkly - insomuch as an octopus can grin. The class was over. The feast was nigh.

Posted by Chris at 10:30 AM >> Commentations (5)