George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
Echoing @OracleOutlook, I will say the Japanese Tokyo Disneyland /Disneysea experience is one of perfect Baudrillard hyperreality--clean, well-swept, devoid of stench, and as ordered as a massively crowded theme park can probably be. Disney Sea is distinct as its own (albeit adjacent) park with its own ticket, in which alcohol may be served--and is, at pretty steep prices. Still from experience no beer is too expensive after a day of hustling around watching Mickey parades and making sure you're at the line at the right time because you bought that one ticket three hours ago that says you can line up at point X.
I've always wanted to go to that Florida Star Wars exhibit (the last time I was at Disney World was pre-Epcot, if that tells you anything). Just to see that Millennium Falcon. My own boys, alas, are aging somewhat out of the age of wonder (I am not certain I ever have) and the days when we took them in costume around Halloween to TDL are behind us (older boy was Luke Skywalker, younger Darth Vader without mask--masks on patrons aren't allowed, and only Disney character costumes, and these only at certain times of the year).
I will note that I don't remember seeing many middle-aged women in Mickey ears, but high school and twenty somethings by the bargeful. The Japanese female obsession with Disney is real. I try hard not to armchair analyze it. But I suspect it has to do with the usual shutting out the harsher realities of growing up. I once dated a girl (well, young woman, she would've been around 27, a flight attendant then) who related to me a story of how when she was at TDL "Mickey" hugged her and she cried. "But why cry?" I remember asking, and her response put paid whatever dinner it was I had bought that night: "Because I knew he would never hurt me."
I was apparently unable to match Mickey and I remember the night of our inevitable breakup as she stood there telling me she was fine just having sex, she didn't mind anything, she just didn't want to be alone--and I, of course, left her alone. At that exact moment the twin towers were coming down, September 11, 2001. Vibrates in the memory. Music, when soft voices die, etc.
It's interesting to read other women who aren't Japanese have this same preoccupation with Disney. A deep well, no doubt.
Edited for typos
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
Without the metaphorical trappings I believe the principle is "Make whatever point(s) you may have without acting like an asshole to people even if you think they're wrong, outgroup, of presumable lower IQ, etc."
The problem is some people legitimately cannot fathom why this is necessary, and/or have been acclimated to assholery by years of online interaction, and therefore don't even realize what's happening.
Frankly this rule is one of the reasons I joined this sub (and followed it over here.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6mo ago
Paging @CanIHaveASong
To OP, look I am no professional, but one of the best bits of advice I ever read was that if you get ghosted, just move on. Sometimes no response is, in fact, a response. You're right, it isn't fun to be ignored, it sucks, it's demoralizing. But it doesn't matter.
If you want reassurances, here they are:
- This has happened to every guy who has tried this, more than once, at one time or another.
- If she is your sorta friend, as you say, you will see her again someday. A woman's prerogative is to change her mind. Just don't feel the need to bring this ignoring up as if it's important. It isn't.
- These hurt feelings are just chemicals inside your brain.
- Women could have a dozen reasons for not responding. They are in a relationship with someone else, they secretly like someone else, they don't want to hurt your feelings and have no idea how to respond, they fear the endless back-and-forth if they do say no and you persist, they fear some other frightening reprisal because Male, or something else.. Don't take rejection as a personal attack on your own desirability.
- It's okay that you are asking this question and asking it here. It shows you're trying to figure things out the way we all do. Don't feel bad about any of this, you'll get better at interactions with women as you mature and develop confidence.
- Good for you for giving it a shot and not just pining away.
Without knowing you, her, or how you interact it's impossible to comment on your stated question of what's wrong with your message. It comes off to me as cloyingly sweet, which is of course no crime. But depending on how you two interact there could be a humor I'm not getting. You don't need a sanity check, but you do need to put your focus elsewhere than this particular person, at least for a good while.
Finally: Send no more texts to this person, ever, for any reason, if you do not receive a reply. If you've already done so, stop. 🛑
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1mo ago
I don't get the fascination with her. At all.
Ah. Let me explain myself. As well to ＠5434a
Because I often make typos it is possible one word seemed to be typed mistakenly, but wasn't. The word on. On (恩) means basically when i do you a favor, you owe me some sort of favor in return (恩返し) . To "accrue undesirable on" then would be to do [something] for someone where they then had a debt to me. My example in this case is the tending of the park--trimming the bushes, weeding unsightly plants, etc. For me to do this alone, in a way for the benefit of the neighborhood, might seem just civic responsibility for an American (or even just a harmless way for a neighbor to pass the time). In Japan however this puts everyone else in the neighborhood in the awkward position of being ever-so-subtly in debt to me, particularly if I am out there often enough, or seem to be applying myself strenuously.
A neighbor who brings you a bag of tomatoes from her back garden has been generous, but you'd do well to in some way take her kids a basket of muffins or whatever. Not the very next day, no need to be too obvious about it, but without too much delay. This is how the wheels of social intercourse stay greased.
None of this is peculiar to Japan, of course, except in the way these norms are adhered to by pretty much all but the most socially inept, fools, or, yes, foreigners. I have lived here long enough that some of this has finally been internalized.
I suspect in the public sphere (certainly in business, at least) the degree to which this kind of behavior scales could dance very close to what would be considered corruption. Reams of text have been published advising non-Japanese how to interact with Japanese representatives--and Japanese as well adjust their norms (at times perhaps hamhandedly) to suit "foreign" behavior. (Scare quotes because for many Jaoanese that term seems to be a monolithic catchall, as if all "foreigners" have the same kind of behavior.
The neighborhood, within about a year, formed a committee of residents represented by a dozen people (who rotate out and in every year or two) and one of the projects the committee created was to have people weed the park. What then happened was that because so many had been recruited to do this cleaning there were more hands than necessary, resulting in a lot of grass that should have stayed in the soil to keep it from eroding getting yanked up and bagged by well-meaning people who couldn't just loaf when there was ostensible work to do. Circle of life.
It's tempting for me to dismiss as odd and dysfunctional a lot of the ways Japanese culture(s) seem to work, but then I have only to think of my own upbringing to realize I shouldn't be casting stones.
If none of this makes sense I will try and clarify.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10mo ago
Listen I am all ready to walk you through your entire relationship from this point forward, just to see if my madskillz actually work. Short of that, if you wisely choose to decline, I would say to you that you may possibly be approaching commitment assbackwards. Let me explain what I mean.
At some point you need to project into eternity. Do you want kids? Or, a kid? As a father myself twice over (both boys) I would say that there is nothing quite like it--you imbue them with the movies you grew up on, your music, your food tastes, your general approach to life, pretty much everything. They will no doubt eventually reject much of it, but there was nothing like that first time I sat my sons down and we all watched the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts and they asked to watch it again, eventually knowing the music as well as I do. There was the added benefit that they understood more of the Greek myths that I read to them when they were too young to know anything but sounds.
This is not me being flippant. Having children is huge. It is, arguably, why any of us are here. So ADHD. Believe me, you can not have ADHD and still get bored AF with your significant other. As it happened I was utterly smitten with my wife during our courting phase, and even now I have moments (usually improbable times such as when I leave early in the morning and see her lying in bed with her mouth open, having stolen all the covers) when I love her completely, when I would die or kill to protect her. But there are also those moments where she pisses me off, where I think WTF woman? There are moments when I walk through the city and see 20 women who I would rather know carnally than my missus. But I realize, or--have realized, late in life--that all of that is bullshit.
This romantic gloaming is, I would argue, inevitable. Do not imagine pairing yourself with a female will be roses and lust ad aeternum. Perhaps it is, for some. But I seriously doubt it.
Where does this leave us then? Other than having read the ramblings of an old man, that is?
Well, back where you are right now. I am not saying you should throw yourself onto the pyre of forever love, but I am saying: Don't be such a doubter. Marriage ain't about the one true one. It's about making a goddam decision and choosing. And just like the cheese tray that comes around, there's always a bunch of camembert, or gruyere, or Stilton, or havarti, or even American fuckin' cheddar. As my former Aussie roommate of 20 years ago (thrice married) once said: "At some point you gotta take your hand off it."
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4mo ago
Man here.
A properly done Ironman suit would cost 2K easily, more if you're hardcore purist who wants fit, accuracy, and lighty up thingies that really drive the women wild. Poorly done unpainted knockoffs a few hundred bucks.
I've a Graflex 3-cell flash tube I bought in 2001 for about 150 bucks that, along with the bubble strip from an early 70s Exactra calculator I also acquired, now looks like this. though that link is not my photo. Total sunk cost about 250 bucks, worth about twice that or considerably more now were I to strike while the iron is hot. (It's not as hot as it used to be.) Which I won't.
I am far in the low ranks of true geekdom, but I am definitely in those ranks somewhere. You shall know me by my Follano stormtrooper armor, though that's a whole nother conversation.
Part Deux of this post
The return commute from work is more hectic--the crepuscular calm of the 5:03 (edit: I realize belatedly that crepuscular actually means twilight, which would be the opposite of dawn, but I am not changing it because I like the consonance.) is miles away from the rush hour bustle of the late afternoon trains--I avoid the buses on this end, usually walking the leisurely half hour to the station, then again walking home on the last leg, which takes about 20 minutes. I do a lot of walking, every day. I have come to understand that although walking burns just as many calories as running (at least in the brief walks I take), it doesn't provide any real sort of cardio unless the walk is strenuous, and even then, once you reach a certain threshold, in order to get the benefits you may want you probably have to go ahead and run. I don't. It's just too damn hot.
We are in summer now. Started June 21st. It hit 90 on my walk to the first return station the other day. I had foregone the jacket and tie for a polo shirt like Daniel Craig in Haiti in the misjudged and underrated film Quantum of Solace. When I am LARPing in that particular getup I like to scrape my keys off the table in Craig fashion, and wait patiently for someone to ask if someone is a friend of mine, so I can remark without humor: "I don't have any friends." As it happens I do, but the line was a good one. If you haven't seen the movie you have no idea what I'm on about.
The first train ride takes me to a commuter hub, where you can actually travel to one of the international airports in my area. You see a lot of Chinese, Korean, Thai, probably other Asians as well. I recognize the first three first on dress and style, then usually on language--I don't understand Chinese, Korean, or Thai, but I know them when I hear them. The Chinese tend to sit on the train expansively, two members of the family on one side, two others on the other. They speak in regular speaking tones on the train. They don't make themselves small or seem to care if anyone else needs a seat (perhaps they do care, and care very much, but they don't show it in any way I can understand.) The Koreans are usually wearing expensive watches and rather fashionable clothes, if of a sort of nouveau riche type often with conspicuous labels and such (very similar to many Japanese, though the labels are slightly different), and have smart haircuts and very well done plastic surgery, in particular the women. The Thais are louder and fewer, and probably much more fun to talk to. Often any of the above will, if I scootch over (my computer is telling me scootch is not a word--maybe I am spelling it wrong?) anyway if I move over they will say "Thank you," to me in very well-pronounced English. Japanese people never respond to me in English--well, almost never.
Once I am at the hub I stride purposefully through the crowds--I have learned over the years to walk quickly and with confidence through massive crowds, like a character in an action film who finds himself in a rousing nightclub--you ignore everyone and everything around you, no matter how interesting, and push your way through as if towards something much more important than the carnal rabble writhing around you. I take a subway, which takes me past the oldest brothel district in this part of Japan, and one of the oldest in the country. If I am lucky, one of the girls has just finished and is getting on the subway home--she will be wearing something either very provocative and ignore everyone--once I saw a girl in a tan/flesh-colored skin-tight one-piece wearing a fucking bucket hat--or will be with another girl and wearing clothes that are almost nondescript, but I always know. Or convince myself that i do. Once I am positive I saw a girl headed to work, though if you were to pin me and ask me "How could you possibly know?" my best answer would be Intuition.
The brothel district is a long street which, at night, has poles with white globes on them. There is a poster on the side of at least one building which says something similar to "Let's keep our brothel district clean!" There is a police box one block outside the district, and police on bicycles cruising through are not unheard of. There is a rather massive apartment complex just east of this block or two of whorehouses, and if you were enterprising and lived in these apartments nothing really would stop you from buying a telescope and camera and documenting exactly who comes and goes. But it's Japan, and something tells me no one does this. I probably would, just as a diversion.
I wrote that it's a street. It's not, really, it's a block or two of parallel streets. These have nicknames, if you must know. One is known as 青春通り (seishun doori or "youth street"). Here you will find girls who are very likely university students somewhere (probably somewhere at least mildly distant) and who are making some extra cash. The signs say the smallest amount of time you can pay for is a 20-minute booking. I have had a discussion with one of these girls, and learned that she gets 60% of whatever is paid. For 20 minutes the price the last time I bothered to look was 16,000 yen, which is roughly 115 USD at current exchange rates.
You walk down the street and you see the genkans--which means the doorway where in a normal house you'd take your shoes off and hang your coat. In these establishments the genkan is open to the air, and while there is a place to put your shoes, instead of a coatrack you will see a girl sitting in a zaisu, a chair flush to the ground with a back, and she may have a blanket modestly draped over her thighs if it's cold. If not, she may be in a bikini, may be dressed like some sort of fairy, may be in a maid's costume, a balldress, even, yes, and you knew this was coming--a high school uniform. In other words, some type of thing that is geared toward the fetish/fantasy of the dudes who end up here. And Japan is nothing if not a fetish/fantasy wonderland. Or cesspool, depending of course on one's perspective. What is remarkable to me is that the times I have beheld this tableau the women have almost all been strikingly beautiful.
Anyway. I don't want to bog this account of my commute down too much with prurient description of the brothel area. I am by no means an expert on the area but I probably know more than a lot of people simply because I have lived here so long, have walked down the street several times, etc. (These stories are less interesting than they probably sound.) Anyway I will leave this whole part of the story in stasis for now. Thank Christ for anonymity online--I only mention any of this because no one on here knows who the hell I am. One reason I like the "privacy" filter or whatever it is. I used to write all sorts of stories on reddit and have now deleted them all (in as much as reddit would allow me). For a long time I liked writing about my life, and I was approached by randos in DMs asking to use my stories in their podcasts. I always agreed with one caveat: Tell me where I can listen to it. They always agreed. And none of them ever got back to me.
Subway takes me to yet another train--my first of the morning, last of the day. Again, in the late afternoon it is very crowded. If I go at a certain time of day and board the right car there is a woman with what I am sure is Proteus syndrome, or what they suspect Joseph Merrick had--her face is incredibly, implausibly distorted. I expect the COVID wave of mask-wearing was a boon for her. She wears a prim blouse and either a skirt or slacks of some sort, and has a bag, and always stands and faces the door, perhaps so she doesn't have to look across the aisle and pretend she doesn't notice everyone forcing themselves not to acknowledge her.
The cars are almost always crowded. There is one woman who always gets on the same car as I do if I have timed it wrong, and she will lunge for any empty seat like a jackal for a wounded bird. Opportunistic bitch. I do not say this. Like everyone else, I stare into the middle distance, or at my phone, or wherever else is convenient to not acknowledge the actions of others. I often will wave another to a seat that comes available and which is within my ass-reach. I have some sort of mental scale which tells me whether I should just sit down or give the seat to someone else. I am sure if I were more Motte-y I would calibrate exactly what quantitative values I weigh in my head in this process. I'm not going to.
When I get to my terminus station I always see two women, striking in their beauty, whose lives appear to be in the reverse order of mine--which is to say where I am going to they are coming from, and vice versa. I wonder if anyone ever notices me in this way. Neither of these women ever look at me and I never say a word to either of them nor do I acknowledge them in any way. But they are milestones on my daily journey. And, oddly, I notice if they aren't there on some days. A cold, perhaps.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3mo ago
You asked for it.
I had a thing in high school where, when faced with the attention of females, I would become so emotionally fraught that I would vomit. You may feel that this is unrelated to what you've written here, and I realize I am being somewhat vague when I say "attention of females," but just give me a minute.
The neurosis--if that's what we can call it, and maybe we can't--plagued me for some time. I can remember exactly when it started, when it ended, and when it threatened to return, which is the part of the story relevant to your situation, probably. But let me try and tell this properly.
I will begin, or, rather, continue, by making a statement that will probably come across as extremely arrogant and un-self-aware. Moreso than even the usual Motte dude waxing philosophical about women. That statement is: I am an attractive man.
Okay now that you've done your spit take, let me qualify: I know that I am not everyone's cup of tea, I cannot imagine I am anyone's version of a 10, and I am not particularly wealthy. Plus, now, I am older, or, relative to many on the Motte, just old. Nevertheless, I in my life I have turned heads, caused women to get nervous and awkward just by my speaking to them, etc. I have been on television and modeled for magazines as the "cool guy," blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. All this prelude to suggest that I have had, in some ways, an advantage over many males. But in the days of which I am writing, none of this mattered in any way.
The first time I felt the slow-rising bile was not the first kiss of youth, or any similar situation where you might imagine a callow young manboy might get bent out of shape. No. It was a rather benign moment where I was sitting at the bar counter of my then-girlfriend's kitchen, being served a plate of I think Stouffer's spaghetti. Why that dish, memory does not reveal. But I remember she served me a single portion (she herself wasn't eating) and I sat there and ate it. It probably tasted fine or at least not so bad that I would have wanted to immediately regurgitate it. Let's even say it was good, for after all she served it to me and why be ungrateful? The same is true of the apple crumble she served me as dessert. I believe her mother had made that herself. A nurse, she was, the mother, which isn't important but informs what happens later.
So I ate the crumble. It was good. Hot and very sweet and something I have never had since, though I had always liked it. But something about the sensation of fullness in this moment collided with whatever else was going on in the warring of my para- and sympathetic nervous systems, and I knew immediately what was to happen. I managed to croak out "excuse me for a second" and may have even said "I need to go to the bathroom." I remember she, my girlfriend, a lovely green-eyed stawberry blonde daughter of a university professor, looked at me with an expression of confused worry, but said simply "Okay" and turned back to her mother, who by now had come into the kitchen to perhaps see how I liked her apple crumble.
I made it almost all the way to the toilet. The key word is of course almost. What happened next is disgusting to relate (this isn't askreddit, after all) so I won't. Suffice to say I threw up, albeit quietly, there in front of the bathroom door. They had hardwood flooring, I recall. Oddly--well, the whole thing was odd--but oddly now that my stomach had relieved itself of its contents I was no longer nauseous. Which of course did not mean that I now had any idea what to do next. After a moment of standing there in baffled shock in the hallway, I stepped over it, rinsed my mouth and face, and returned with as much dignity as I could summon to the kitchen, saying "Can I possibly have a paper towel or something? I just sort of threw up."
They were kind people. As a nurse, the mother's instinctive, first reaction was to stabilize. They sat me down, they fetched me a glass of water, they adopted furrowed brows. There was no lip-curled disgust. No "Eeww" or similar. The mother instructed her daughter to lay me down on one of their couches in a dim room, and dispatched herself to the hallway for the unenviable task of cleanup.
They both seemed to suspect illness. My temperature was taken. I was worried over and pampered and urged to just relax, sip the water, don't worry about a thing. Only I knew the unspeakable truth, one that I dared not tell--the truth all males in such a situation know and have known throughout time: I was not physically impaired. I was just fucking scared shitless.
Now. While I say men throughout time have realized this about themselves, it's true that they have had such moments of purging panic fear in extremely different circumstances: When confronted unexpectedly with a woolly mammoth, or at the call of "Charge!" or in the ball-turret at 30,000 feet, or when about to storm a fucking beach under mortar fire. These men have puked in abject fear. And so be it. I, though, maybe because I had never been tested, maybe because I wasn't much of an athlete, or maybe because I had just watched too much goddam TV--I puked in the warm kitchen of a beautiful girl serving me comfort food. The heart is a lonely hunter.
Fast forward weeks, months, to prom night. She was wearing one of those strapless dresses where her shoulders were bare, as if she were rising up like Aphrodite out of it, and the moment arrived when I was supposed to do my thing as we lay there on yet another dark couch, and pull the dress down. I mean even in my state of chode-hood I wasn't incapable of reading signals. And so what, then, gentle reader, do you imagine I did?
At least I made it to the bathroom this time.
Let me be clear here in my description of what was happening: I was not revolted. There was no feeling of disgust, which is what is usually associated with vomiting or the urge to do so. Quite the contrary. The cause, as I have suggested, was panic fear. A normal reaction to stimuli thrown into bizarro world.
I lived with this for some time. I eventually broke up with the kind green-eyed girl. She married a close friend of mine. Then divorced him. Anyway the experience of wanting to puke any time I felt a tingling in my loins or flutter in the heart did not just go away. I was to feel this in many instances as I got older. Probably I should have drunk alcohol or ingested some other substance to lubricate my social self, but I was raised in a teetotaling household and wasn't equipped with the wherewithal. And although I came to drink eventually, and, eventually, even get high from time to time, this was always in a very specific context with a specific friend (who I've written about in a separate, equally rambling post).
I can remember moments poised over the porcelain dry-heaving, praying audibly as we are said to do when at the end of our respective ropes: "Please, make this stop." And it didn't, and wouldn't, for a long long time. Until it did. A time for all things, I suppose.
Now we move in time. Now in the story I am early twenties. I am still a virgin. I have left home and moved to Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. In my training group I meet a leggy brunette with bookish glasses and doe eyes, and I fuck her in a tent as we camp in a dark gorge away from our training group. Accidentally. She laughs that I am a virgin, but not in a mocking way. I am, to her--she a wild artist a few years older from Huntingdon Beach--I am like someone from a Harper Lee story. I embody a southern gentlemen fetish she never knew she had. And she shepherds me patiently through my belated sexual awakening--and Christ looking back on it how insatiable are young men, or at least we were then. Surely it wasn't just me.
So what does any of this have to do with your question or issue?
After I returned to the US I had changed. Many events far too numerous to write out or even summarize occurred in the interim, but suffice to say I came of age, whatever that phrase means for you. I left a boy and returned a man. I began to be the guy who threw parties. I organized social functions. I became gregarious, at least for a time. And in short order I met a new girl (the woman in tent I had long ago left behind, and then she had quickly moved on. Other entanglements had followed.) This new young woman I have also alluded to in these threads. She was a very attractive, confident, intellectual Jewish girl (not that that last part matters except that she was the only Jewish girl I was ever intimate with.) And we had sex and then she stopped answering my calls. And then the old familiar feeling returned.
In those days we still used answering machines. I'd call hers and leave messages I hoped were funny. And some of them probably were. It didn't matter. I saw her in a Camaro next to some buff dude who looked like his idea of good conversation was talking about Bama football, or bong types, or titties. And she was hanging on his side like a nymph to his Apollo.
Next time I saw her was at a bar. Two seconds later I felt like hitting the toilet. I didn't . Instead I spoke to her, had a laugh, and took my leave . I decided I wouldn't care about anyone enough again to be that worried what they thought. This required a considerable amount of bootstrapping for me to convince myself. But apparently, I did. A time for all things.
Is there any advice in here? God knows. But it's an anecdote, and you asked. Good luck man. I'm rooting for you.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9mo ago
As a resident and homeowner in Japan one of the small aspects of daily life I miss most are yards. In which I might play with my sons, or keep my dog if we had one, or mow and rake as therapeutic look-this-thing-I-did-has-immediate-results. As it is we have pavement, and in one small section, gravel, and a few potted plants. There is a small dedicated neighborhood park adjacent to our home, and for a time I used to busy myself with its upkeep, until it was gently suggested to me that this was accruing undesirable on on the part of the rest of the neighborhood, to whom my behavior could only be seen as odd but then what-can-one-expect-from-foreigners.
I am not sure if lawns in particular are your bugbear, or a general disdain of people. Lawns are arguably not the sole domain of the suburban middle class. You use the term Karen-y which puts you square in my mind in a certain youthful angry nihilistic demographic that is alien to me. Though I could be wrong. The snark may be clouding your greater points.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
As I sit here of a Friday evening and reduce the bolognese sauce (avocado salad, a kind of coleslaw, buttered garlic baguette--these are the other parts of the dinner not the makeup of the sauce) I reflect that I have gained much from my time on the Motte. I don't know or interact with any of you on a personal level, but then I am in an environment where apart from my family I interact with precious few in that way (there's something called tatemae in Japan that means basically "outward face that you show to the world" that I keep on most always.) I probably express myself on this site more than anywhere else, in some ways. Though to be honest am probably polite here to an effete degree that belies my face-to-face persona, where I am an unremitting ass.
This to say I appreciate everyone here, even the wackadoos whose opinions I disagree with vehemently. Everyone here, regardless of viewpoint, seems really intelligent and talented at expressing themselves in writing. So thank you. And I mourn those who've left, or who rarely post for whatever reason, in particular a few people who I won't name.
Once again, not fun. But I appreciate all y'all's input and I value the active participation here. I disagree with those who've said this place has ossified.
Happy Friday, all.
Alas, that sub is not defunct and still has users by the bucketload. I, too, watched that interview, and was appalled. I am more appalled that on its heels the sub seems to have continued firmly on its dubious rails, at speed.
On a related note, does anyone feel reddit has changed in the past few years, possibly since COVID but maybe after? I deleted the redditisfun app from my phone about six months ago but reddit used to be a site I hit nearly every morning on my commute and enjoyed reading through.
Part of it may be that I began surfing reddit around 2014, nearly ten years ago, and the five year olds of that era are now posting on reddit as militant teens. As I turn into an old man the whole world seems to become younger. I am grateful on a regular basis that there was no internet when I was a teenager; God knows what tripe I would have been posting regularly with smug arrogance.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
Integrity here suggests you don't wear the orange shirt. You've made the argument yourself and if you're looking for validation/affirmation, you now have it. Go forth, and fret no more.
Upvotes don't necessarily mean "Agree with everything stated in the post", especially, possibly, with posts by Kulak, who can be relied upon to post passionately held, longform, brave, and often objectionable posts on a periodic basis. I could be wrong and there are several people who buy into the Indian hate, but that's not my experience here.
Edit: People are free to hate whoever the hell they want. Not trying to suggest there's a Motte consensus.
Low effort post really wants to be incoming. Instead I'm going to wax nostalgic and write another scrollpast.
Many years ago I got high for the first time with my good friend, R. Let's just call him R. It happens to be his real first initial, but whatever. I loved him dearly. Past tense not because my love has ended, but because he is dead now; I'll get to that.
R was the son of a very interesting father who probably once worked for the CIA in some capacity in the 70s. R's family, due to his father's interesting career, in R's childhood at least, traveled all over the world, in particular the middle east, and he had the tchotchkes and prints and flotsam of such trips all over his high school downstairs room (he was from a wealthy family and his "room" consisted of the entire downstairs.) R's dad--who treated him shamefully post-divorce until he decided he wanted to bond with his only son--had similar decor in his own home: Original folk-type paintings of sheiks, large brass platters on the wall, various brass tea urns and pitchers, حُقَّة, etc.
R told many evocative stories about his childhood travels, mingling these with reflection on the pain of his parents' divorce ("like getting shot with a shotgun in the gut"), his sadness at the inevitable loss of the childhood idyll, and his suspicion that he would, if he ever became a father, fuck up his own children (He never did. Either.) One memory of his that sticks, oddly, with me, I who may be the only one who has any memory of it now: He, his father, his mother, his sister, on some beach in Greece, happened upon an American woman sunbathing topless. They--his family, the woman--happened to be once-removed through some friend back in Alabama, and ended up cooking an octopus in the sand.
My own childhood memories were of sitting in a screened-in deck at a rented cabin in Gulf Shores staring at jigsaw puzzles and giving myself third degree burns upturning an electric pitcher of hot coffee. Less romantic.
Anyway the first time I enjoyed the intimate ministrations of Mary Jane I was probably 17 or so years old. This would have been circa 1985. Rocky had reached IV. Brazil had just come out. It was the year of The Breakfast Club. Don't you. Forget about me. The first time I got high, possibly smoking whatever parts, possibly the female sex organs but I doubt it seriously: I felt nothing. I sat there over our board game of trivial pursuit ("Who killed Jabba the Hutt?" So easy as to be laughable, but these were the days before you could look anything up in five seconds) and, after smoking at least one shared joint and taking several hits off a water bong, asked: "What am I supposed to be feeling?"
I have since learned that this is not unusual the first time. One expects the drunk, the alcohol buzz. It's different. I would get high many times after this, though always only with R. This was as much about naïveté as trust: I didn't know anyone else well enough to know whether they got high, or when, or how often. I knew R well enough to know all of the above, and also to be invited along. I remember he would sometimes share a joint with me and then have to be somewhere else--his social life was always very active. He eventually became some sort of crystal meth dealer, which, contrary to my own understanding of how the world should work, altered his social circle such that he did not have to hang around with the likes of me, but was often surrounded by extremely confident and well-dressed people: leggy women, beautiful female French exchange students, sardonic boys with what seemed like an inexhaustible supply of witty comments and, ever ready, subtle putdowns. In other words, The Rich.
I remember sitting on a rock in a creekbed, midnight. My parents were long asleep, not knowing where the hell I was but trusting that I wasn't doing what it was I was, in fact, doing: Getting high with my feet dangling in the water. Everything was funny, or extremely important, or beautiful. R had a cassette deck with batteries and he took it out and made a recording of us talking on that creekbed, sitting on that rock, and I still have this recording--it is, alas, on the same cassette that he made it, in a pile of cassettes my wife periodically urges me to toss: For we have no cassette player. When I read reddit comments or any ripostes of the young, I sometimes remind myself of this: Someday they, too, will have memories they cannot access simply because they don't have whatever the future equivalent is of a fucking cassette player.
R and I stayed friends for many years. Have I mentioned he was fat? He was. I remember walking through supermarkets with him and his picking out the Snackwells and counting the grams of fat (not, in those tender years, concerned with the sugar). He lost the weight, then gained it back, then lost it again, then gained much of it back. It kept going like that. Fast forward through time, through his great lake parties, his girlfriends, both true and not, his studying to be a chef in Italy, his eventual marriage to the woman I think, in my worst moments, may have been the instrument of his death. His last email to me of his health problems--liver failure. Or maybe it was kidney failure. Or both.
When I flew home to see him in his hospital bed the doctor assured me his brain was already so full of ammonia that he would have no idea of what was going on. And yet when I had entered the room no more than twenty minutes earlier, R had grasped my hand, sat up, and looked at me with what I can only describe as anger. That he was being kept alive. That he had been reduced to this bloated mass surviving only because of machines. Or maybe he was still pissed at me for something I had done 20 years ago.
He died, had a funeral, I delivered the eulogy, the mic didn't work, then probably three years later his dad was reduced to a bedridden shadow of his former robust self. I remember holding his hand at his makeshift bed in his house while his home nurse gave us a moment. "I commune daily with R," he said, speaking of his son, my friend, the guy I had many times gotten high with. "He speaks to me," he said. I had my doubts. I, who in the years since R had died had tried all manner of ways to get in touch with him--astral projection, lucid dreaming, everything but paying a village shaman to do us a seance. Because I loved him, and he was gone too soon, and to this day getting high I remember him--though of course to get high in Japan will land you in all sorts of hot water. And so I don't. And this isn't some opsec bullshit. I truly don't. Not that it matters to any of you.
But if I did, and when I someday surely again will, I'll ask whoever it is I get it from for the female sex organ of the cannabis. So thanks for the tip, is what I'm saying.
Edit: Leia. Princess Leia killed Jabba the Hutt. Of course she did.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
13d ago
May I offer a reply that is neither a suggested location nor anything else you will probably want to read, and may in fact be advice you do not want to hear and did not ask for?
Yes? Great.
You mention having children. Wherever you go, if you go anywhere, should be chosen with their childhood, upbringing, and environment in mind. I say this as a parent who has made very specific choices, some of them possibly wrong (living extremely far from one set of grandparents who would have loved to regularly see grandchildren and who are both now dead) but also some probably right. I include language in this (if you don't understand the language it's still a very safe bet that your child or children will outpace your fluency within five years or less. Which is fine, but means also you'll have difficulties dealing with their school--teachers, other parents, their friends, their friends' parents, etc.) Also schooling, and if you homeschool or whatever there is the notion of isolating your child in a possibly unhelpful way from potential peers.
Basically if you're going to have kids --and do, certainly, if you feel you want to--they ought to be arguably a main factor contributing to your other life choices. I cannot stress this enough. Also you will find many who disagree with me (even here, no doubt), but I'm right and they're wrong.
My train is here, but I think I said what I wanted. Good luck.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
9mo ago
To be frank, my dad and I never had many overlapping interests, either. He was a big football fan, played it in high school. He had been a scoutmaster in his youth. I neither played football nor did he push me toward scouts. I liked watching movies. By the time I began watching them without him he had lost interest and thought movies were mostly silly. I liked reading books. He saw me reading a John Updike book once-- Brazil I believe, and this was the cover of the paperback edition I had. He scoffed and asked me if I really read novels. books like that (he was a type to judge a book by its cover.) My mom was an avid reader of romance novels so I guess he thought that's what it was. I don't know because I put it down out of shame and to this day still have never read it.
My point is I don't think I particularly was close to my dad, even in adulthood when I made efforts to be closer. Friends would come over and he would be garrulous, but once they left he'd sit with me in silence, seemingly completely uninterested. The main question he would ask when I'd come home to visit was "What's the price of gas in Japan?" Once he asked this twice on the ride from the airport. But that was years ago. He did seem to love his grandchildren--my boys. Though the fact that I married a Japanese woman I think always sat wrong with him. He at some point put me in a box that he felt he understood enough that he didn't need to think about it any more, and he closed up the box and that was that. Of course I could be wrong. Maybe that's what I did to him.
He died almost a year ago exactly (off by a few weeks as I write this.) I don't mean to get maudlin or personal, but anyway the way you were brought up doesn't have to be the way you bring up your own brood, should you have any later in life. At least, that's my thinking. My boys are still in the oven; not quite done yet, not quite grown. We'll see.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11mo ago
This strikes me as unnecessarily pessimistic, though I myself do not live in Korea and have only passed through there and therefore I cannot with complete confidence say that you are far from the mark. I do, however, live in Japan, which has--to some degree--similar cultural mores.
In Japan (and be warned: Incoming personal viewpoint not based on hard data and dancing perilously close to the most shameful generalizations of nihonjinron), as perhaps everywhere, it takes all types. You do have what used to be called kyoiku mama who were obsessive about education for their children and putting them through the grinder of cram schools to get into "top schools" (scare quotes because such schools are only "top" due to their bafflingly rigorous entrance examinations--once students are enrolled, the so-called 人生の夏休み or "summer vacation of life" begins, when the pressures and strictures surrounding high school and prepping for the Big Exam are behind them, and they are essentially guaranteed to both graduate and receive a job of similar clout as their school, regardless of academic performance.)
But not all mothers are kyoiku mama and not all students are obsessive about the status of their universities. The ruling class and future bureaucrats all have a school they typically attend (a public university, in particular Tokyo University), but your average joe (or joanne) who wants to work at a car dealership or electronics store needn't worry about shooting for that goal. From not quite birth, but probably from at least high school onward, the trajectory is set--and it's not all the doom and gloom of what you are characterizing as a "miserable wagecuck." Nor is "the prole life" seen as such a horrible fate.
I do not suggest here that everyone is happy--no more than they are perhaps in Hungary, or Australia, or the United States. But I would suggest that to the degree people outside Japan wring their hands or shake their heads about karoshi (death from overwork) or the punishing workweek of the salaryman, they probably make the mistake of imposing their own cultural norms and expectations on a context where they probably should not.
To get back to Korea, I imagine, as in Japan (and more and more in the US), fame is the magic fairy dust that creates an aura of wonder around even the most humble and banal personality. To be famous is to be notable (regardless of why), and in a society that to some degree perhaps values conformity (as in Japan and Korea) ironically this is an acceptable way to be a nail that sticks up. Thus: A certain percentage of families will shepherd their children toward this (for that vicarious fame-by-proxy) and a certain number of teens with any sort of performing talent will naturally be drawn to this particular candle flame simply because of the promise of glamour.
In other words, the pull needn't be a draw away from the workaday of the office society (which not everyone is a part of anyway) or some horrible anonymity in a suburb (in fact this is to some degree a goal to shoot for--a similarity to everyone else, a "joining society" [shakai sanka is the term in Japan]). The draw is that youthful aspiration, Fame, I'm gonna live foreevah, I'm gonna learn how to fly, etc. Not everyone has it; but a lot do.
Finally, the cutthroat aspect: Everything seems cutthroat. In Japan even getting a driver's license is an unimaginable hassle of paying thousands of dollars to go to driving school then take a test where the most infinitesimal missteps will cost you enough points that you fail--and are not told why. The typical Japanese professor at my university will administer an exam, mark it, release the scores, but not tell students which questions they missed. This is for you to go sort out in fear and trembling. Being on a cheerleading squad is cutthroat. Being in any sort of anything is cutthroat. It makes sense then that being in an idol group (which will have a cultural capital regardless of the fame of the group) is also going to be cutthroat. And all the other contestants are also vying not just against you but with you, you're all in the same boat, etc. etc. This imbues a great sense of group and belonging, to, at least Japanese, and I imagine to Koreans as well. I noted that in that blogpost many, if not all, of the informants of the author were not themselves Asian. They happened to "make it" in the groups for whatever reason, but the cultural expectations and norms of the process were not part of their own emotional disposition, for lack of a better term, and in the end they balked at experiences that someone more imbued in the culture would not.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11mo ago
I live here (Japan) and this is only one aspect of Japanese law that makes me uneasy. I even pause when leaving online restaurant reviews for this reason.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
15d ago
This is the kind of statement my father might have said, and clearly it's true. (of course he also grew up in Alabama in the 50s and 60s). Were the issue something different (were she taking a stance with which I had no sympathy) I might even find this slippery slope aspect worrying. I can't remember the MLK quote but the gist of it is that to be moral one has to break unjust laws. Or perhaps more aptly, to be a hero, currently, is to behave like a merely decent human being. (That's May Sarton via LeCarré).
I've always been admiring of Rowling and bewildered at how she has become the focus of such hatred for what seems to me to be an uncomplicated, straightforwardly moral stance. She's even said that in other contexts she would march for trans people's rights to not suffer bullying or violence.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5mo ago
I have never known anyone to join the military because of pay. If anything, the military for many when I was younger was a way to receive training in some of the blue collar trades they would later join on discharge. Then of course some just joined to kick ass in Iraq (I was 21 when the Gulf War occurred.)
I was born and raised in the South fwiw, and though my own family also had its share of military service going back generations, I was, in my youth, much more a pacifist. I still did Peace Corps because you didn't just age up without serving your country in some way, or that was the thinking (and PC was in some way "serving" albeit that may have been my rationalization.)
Of course, times may have changed.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5mo ago
Agreed, and I find the whole notion/question incredibly tawdry and symptomatic of cultural rot, even as a thought experiment. I'm sure that sounds condescendingly naive--and perhaps moralistic in a lowclass, statistically illiterate sorta way, apparently. So be it; I wouldn't have to think too much about this to type No.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1yr ago
I would argue that Kennedy, as the titular head of Lucasfilm, bears ultimate responsibility, but then she hired Tony Gilroy and we got Andor, which I would argue is one of the best viewing experiences in the Star Wars oeuvre since 1981 and ESB. Andor is more anti-empire than anti-capitalism (i.e. it's what Star Wars started out as), but one of the things I find interesting about it is that its theme of rebellion against a seemingly all-powerful but grossly abusive and incompetent system has been embraced by both (extreme) sides of the US political spectrum--perhaps because both of these extremes want the same thing: System collapse to be replaced with [something.] It could be called genius, from a marketing perspective, but I don't really think anyone knew this would happen.
That's all quite peripheral to my enjoyment of the series, however. The characterizations, world-building, acting, music, and cinematography were all just incredibly refreshing, and far superior than the awfulness that was Obi Wan Kenobi, which is almost a literally crying shame since Ewan McGregor came back for this role and it could have been done so much better in the hands of someone who was driven by a desire to build art and not ideology.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5mo ago
Really, I can't convince myself any good reason to not "drive like an asshole."
You'll get there if you keep thinking. Apart from the danger to other people's lives (and also your own life and the lives of your passengers when your unstoppable force meets its immovable object), the most compelling reason to not be an asshole (on the road at high speeds in a 2 ton metallic box, in line at Lowe's, at the table at Red Lobster, or, yes, online): is that it's contagious. Your zooming in front of a frazzled mother shakes her up, she gets so rattled she snaps at her daughter, who is then a little bitch to her brother, who then storms out and throws a rock at a window. It's a cycle of destruction and human misery that is a microcosm of hell on earth. Sure, you get wherever faster and mildly more smug, but you've fucked over your fellow men and women to do so. If explaining why that is not ideal is necessary, it is probably also pointless.
That said, I understand you may have been going for hyperbole.
Today on the morning train nothing of import happened. This is not unusual. I should say nothing happened that would make me want to write a haiku, or villanelle, or sestina, or whatever. It was a usual day. The usual day is as follows:
Wake: 4 a.m. Yes, 4 a.m. This is 5 days a week. You get used to it, even at my age. Do the usual hygiene things. Suit or whatever has been laid out by me the night previously, so insert myself into whatever getup I imagined.
Walk: To the train. I used to bicycle, but my bicycle of ten years eventually turned into a pile of moving junk and was a deathtrap with capricious gears and dubious brakes, so when the recycle truck guy came by chanting his chant for computers, bicycles, old fridges, I flagged him down, scraped off my ID sticker, and threw my bike in the back of his truck. Now I walk. This only sucks if it is raining. The walk at that hour is dark as a motherfuck in the winter, but this time of year is almost bright, and I find my best clear thinking happens at this time. All the rebuttals I might have made. all the best arguments I might make, every clear thought and esprit d'escalier I might have had in the previous week or day or two crystallizes at this time, on this walk. I see no one and say nothing and walk the whole length in silence. Sometimes I quietly sing Billy Joel's My Life and think of the proper piano chords I might play and that will get me a third of the way.
Arrive: At the station around 4:45. Yeah I get ready fast. It takes about 20 minutes to walk. Train leaves at 5:03. On the train is a bald construction worker guy who is always on the platform with me. He always squats on the platform, and plays apparently some inane mobile game on his phone--I heard the wakawaka sound this morning as he was playing it. One asshole old man who wears a bucket hat and button-down shirts with a suit. One woman with long, perfect legs down the end whose face I have never seen but who looks vaguely, from a distance, like a Japanese Ingrid Bergman to my Humphrey Bogart. I'll never speak to her. I love my wife, after all.
Ride: The train. The first of three. The first is the longest, a local, lasts around 40-ish minutes. I typically read a book, browse The Motte (TM), or do something like DuoLingo so I don't lose my place in the Diamond League.
Ride again: The next train This one is more of a subway and lasts about 10 minutes. For some reason this one is always overly cold. In the afternoon on the return version of this same commute you can sometimes see the prostitutes from Tobita shinchi heading home. That's a whole other post.
Eat: I have a coffee, usually from the McDonald's. Sometimes there is an old woman there who reminds me of Bathilda Bagshot from the Harry Potter movies--if you don't know what that means I guess you don't have kids the age of my sons, which is fine. Bathilda Bagshot in the films is actually a serpent, and there is a scene where she transmogrifies into said serpent (we later learn its name is Nagini, and even later learn this serpent is actually not Bathilda nor a serpent but originally a fairly hot Asian woman). Anyway that scene where the old woman reverts into a giant Anaconda-like magic snake thing is disturbing as hell, as far as disturbing CGI snake images in fantasy films go--and this woman at the McDonald's, I am not saying she is a magic evil snake Horcrux, but if somehow it turned out that she were let me say I would not be surprised, not in the slightest. Her voice is too deep. She possesses a dark look in her eyes; her irises and pupils are the same oily black. Not cool, is what I'm saying. Her sclera appears to be dun-colored. Something seems really really wrong. It's probably in my head.
Ride again: The final train. This train arrives 6:21. On it one finds those youthful souls returning from nights out. Girls in immodest dress, once two guys in tightish jeans holding hands as they slept on the bench with their mouths lolling open. Once a girl with raven hair and sneakers, looking like what I would imagine a girl who had spent some time in LA might look, lay half fallen over on the bench, drowsing off a drunk or a really good time, and whatever Bluetooth or other technical function allowed her Iphone to play music out of something besides its speakers had come undone, and her phone lay splat on the floor blurting out Hip Hop. Big no-no here.
Ever the hero, I walked over and sat beside her, knowing enough that I couldn't touch her even to wake her. I nevertheless tried to accomplish this by speaking to her with authority, lowering my voice intentionally, but keeping a kind tone. They say if you hear your own name when you are asleep you will wake--this is probably bullshit. Nevertheless I tried Yuki, and Misato, and Moe and similar, but nothing worked. She kept sleeping, her phone kept blatting out its insufferable American hiphop.
Eventually I get to my final stop and ride the bus to work, which as it happens is a hospital. There is a a cardiologist who rides the same bus as I do, but I never speak to him and he never speaks to me. I think we both realize that if we ever did speak we would have to then speak every day for eternity, and who wants that? Or maybe I'm just a rude shit.
This started out with me imagining it would be more interesting than it actually is. If you got this far, thank you. Happy Friday, all. I really enjoy this place, as crazy as some of you drive me with your bullshit.
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