There is a crazy homeless dude outside the 7-11 window this morning. He’s got dirty rasta-style locks of hair going down to his waist. Black skin from the layers of dirt. Wearing one flip-flop on his right foot. Holding two flip-flops in his hands. I haven’t seen this guy too often. I saw him yesterday, and he nearly ran right into me. That’s one thing about these street guys and the street kids. They are completely outside the normal world of law and social convention. They just walk anywhere they want. Don’t look. Don’t care. I’ve seen these guys walk out into a busy intersection like they are strolling across a meadow. Cars stop for them because they have no choice. No one honks at them or gets mad because they know it would have no effect.

I was in a new Internet café the last couple of days. It’s kind of a new beast. It has a style that I hadn’t come across before. For one thing, it is very large and stretches across three floors. I have no idea how many computer stations there are, but at a guess, I’d say 150. It is open 24 hours a day and has a computerized log-in system. They assign you a computer and print out a slip of paper showing your computer number and the time that you logged in. They also give you a mouse pad and expect you to turn it in when you’re done. People steal them otherwise. They also ask everyone to leave their knapsacks at the door. The place is so large that they can’t monitor all the computers, and people would routinely steal mice and monitors. I imagine people have even tried to steal entire computers or even computer components. The first time I went into this place to check it out, they asked me to leave my pannier bag at the front door. They just put a number on it and put it on the floor near the door. I told them that there was no way I could do that. The bag itself is too valuable to me let alone the contents. Luckily, a senior manager was there, and he was quite accommodating and said it was okay for me to take my bag inside. The second time I went there, I just made sure to leave my pannier bag at the hotel. I just took a small pouch containing my various flash drives and MP3 players.

The chairs were just plastic pieces of crap, but they were comfortable enough. The mouse worked. The monitor was okay. The two USB ports on the back worked. (None on the front worked, of course. Why is that? Why do none of the USB ports on the front of computers work?) The computer was stripped down and was heavily restricted in terms of what you could do. Still, I was able to plug in my various devices, and I could access them in a roundabout way. And I was able to install programs like VUZE and then download torrents. They even had a small (and disgusting) bathroom on an upstairs level and sold cold drinks out of a cooler at the front. They played horrific music from a local radio station quite loudly, but I blocked that out with my own ear phones. It all sounds pretty good, but there was a very large fly in the ointment – a dealbreaker. It was too hot. They had air conditioners, but like many businesses here they try to save on electricity bills by rarely running them. I could sit there for about an hour and be okay. After that, the heat and mugginess becomes overwhelming. And it isn’t just me. All the Filipinos were sweating and fanning themselves and looking like they were about to fall over. I spoke to them on both occasions about this and told them that it was far too hot inside the place. The problem with most of these businesses in the Philippines is that they are designed to be air conditioned. The building is totally sealed with no air circulation. If you don’t run the air conditioners, it becomes a sweat lodge – especially when you have 150 computers running. It’s okay to have no air conditioning if the windows are open and a breeze is blowing through. But places like that have no windows at all. No one paid any attention to me when I gave them my feedback about the temperature. I told them that I liked their place, but I really couldn’t come back as a customer if it stayed this hot. I was ignored. It’s hard to blame them. Filipino customers are very passive, as I’ve pointed out. They won’t vote with their feet or their voice. They will continue to pack this place day and night no matter how uncomfortable it is. They seem to accept it as what they deserve. They don’t fight back.

Oh, I forgot the best thing about this Internet café. Since they had three floors, they divided up the normal people from the morons – the game players. People wanting to use the Internet were on the first floor. The stupid, moronic, rude, disgusting, and very loud game players were on the second and third floors.

I went to the Internet café yesterday intending to update all my podcasts (of course) and then watch something from VICE on YouTube. I got sidetracked at the beginning and downloaded the season finale of Deadliest Catch. I don’t think I have to watch that show ever again. Nothing of interest happens. They try to play up all this tension and suspense about them not getting any crabs. When they pull up a string of pots that don’t have many crab, they treat it like it is the end of the world. But every season, every boat gets its quota of crabs and gets its 2.2 million dollars or whatever it is so they can all buy new trucks or a new house or whatever. Of course, not every string of pots is going to hit big. But it’s no big deal. They just pull up the pots and put them somewhere else. They just keep doing that until they find the crabs. That’s fishing. And I hate all the complaining. They go on and on about how fishing for crab is the greatest thing ever and they could never do anything else and how their family has done it for generations. Then when they are out on the ocean, all they talk about is getting back to port and how much they hate it out there and how difficult it is. I also dislike the naked greed. The only thing they think about is money. Money, money, money. And the only reason they need all that money is that they are living a lifestyle that demands a huge flow of cash each month to cover all the bills. I began to hate it when they pulled up a pot of crab and go “Ka ching! Ka ching!” Just counting the money. And, as I said before, I just feel sympathy for the crab. The crab fishermen don’t seem to show them any respect.

While downloading Deadliest Catch, I noticed a torrent for Guardians of the Galaxy, and I downloaded that, too. It was a cam, of course, not a DVD rip. But I was curious to check it out. It is THE summer blockbuster of this year. Everyone is raving about it.

The cam turned out to be the worst cam I have ever seen. It’s not reasonable to get angry at a person who tapes a movie in a theater illegally and then takes the time to upload it to a torrent site. However, if you are going to do something, anything, why not try to do it well? If you are going to do a totally shitty job, why do it at all? In this case, the dude was holding the camera in his hand and eating popcorn etc the entire time. Most of the time, he only captured about 60% of the screen from left to right and just the top 50%. I imagine everyone has seen a trailer or a commercial somewhere. There’s a scene where they are in jail and the prison guards are describing each of the characters. At one point, they get to the raccoon, and the scene is funny because the raccoon is only two feet tall. Well, in this cam version, you don’t see the raccoon at all. There’s nothing on the screen but the top. The audio was also horrible. The bad audio was actually the worst part for me. I don’t mind a bad picture, to be honest. But bad audio is a much worse problem.

Semi-spoilers ahead: Anyway, even taking into account how awful my cam copy was, the movie didn’t seem that good to me. It felt like a cheap copy of Serenity. I did like a lot of the characters. They were a lot of fun. I loved Groot, the sentient tree. And Rocket Racoon was entertaining. And they all had funny lines. And I liked that they often didn’t take themselves or the movie very seriously. But structurally, the movie seemed very flawed to me. There is the standard opening scene to show the hero’s tragic childhood. Then there is the scene to show that he is cool and a badass when he grows up. It’s a big fight scene and then a spaceship chase scene as he steals a priceless orb. Next scene, he tries to sell the orb, and he has a big fight with an assassin and two bounty hunters. Next scene, they are in prison for two minutes and then there is a long, long fight scene as they break out of prison and a long spaceship chase scene. They try to sell the orb again, and then two bad guys show up with spaceships. A big fight scene and a long spaceship chase scene. Next scene, another big space battle as they attack the bad guy’s main battle spaceship. The fighting goes on forever. There are all these clichéd scenes, such as when the good sister assassin meets her evil sister assassin. And they have to have a hand-to-hand fight scene – which goes on forever and contains no surprises. The fighting never stops. Finally, you get the confrontation between the hero and the biggest bad guy and they fight it out. The hero wins because he has friends, and there is a big callback to his tragic childhood and his dying mother. I was bored the entire time. I’m sure I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if I’d been watching a good copy. At the same time, all the funny and imaginative bits were all in the trailers and clips on YouTube. And everything was a cheat, as always. Spoiler: There’s a scene where the sentient tree, Groot, sacrifices himself to save the lives of his friends. They play this up like crazy like it is the saddest and most tragic thing ever – Groot dying in order to save his friends. And then he is dead and everyone is crying and upset. But, of course, everyone watching the movie knows that Groot isn’t really dead. He’s going to come back to life in some fashion. It’s 100% obvious. Groot is a tree, for goodness’ sake. Throughout the entire movie, we’ve seen him growing new branches all the time. That’s his superpower. He can just grow super fast from a small twig. Rocket Racoon, while crying his eyes out, picks up a small twig from Groot’s dead carcass and takes it with him to remember him and honor him and all that crap. And, big surprise, the twig sprouts a leaf and starts to grow. Wow! Groot is going to come back to life and be around for the sequel. What a huge surprise!

Still, I really did like Groot. They are going to sell billions of action figures of Groot, Rocket Racoon, and Starlord. And now we’re going to have to live through months or years of hype as they build up to the sequel. The set-up for the sequel was also so hamfisted. They just jammed it in.

On top of that, they cheated – as they always do – with the spaceship. They do this all the time. It’s the blockbuster version of having your cake and eating it, too. Starlord loves his spaceship. And, of course, it is destroyed in the big fight scene. Then in the last minute of the movie, there is a big surprise. The government of the planet of Xander was so thankful that Starlord saved them that they built him a brand new spaceship exactly like the one he lost. The stupid thing, though, is that his spaceship was unique. His whole thing was that because of his mother, he loved rock and roll from earth. He had mix cassettes and used an old Walkman and an old tape deck on his spaceship to play them. The government of Xander somehow managed to build him a replica spaceship complete with an old-fashioned tape deck from Earth.

The lack of logic in that doesn’t bother me that much. What bothers me is the emotional cheating. In the movie, they expect us to feel terrible that Starlord’s spaceship was destroyed. It’s a huge tragedy! But that spaceship is so important for the sequel that by the end of the movie, they have to come up with some trick to bring it back. They kill Groot and expect us to feel sad about that. But then they bring him back to life. This is partially why so much television programming is a breath of fresh air. I’m a huge Game of Thrones fan now. I had trouble with it before because I really didn’t understand what was going on. But I watched it all a second time and I studied it and made notes and made sure that I understood every single character and place. Then it made much more sense, and I loved it. One great thing is that the story does not play these emotional games. Characters can die. Any character can die. And they don’t come back to life. They don’t care. They will take the main character that the entire show is based on and kill him. Just like that. So you really have no idea what is going to happen next. It feels real. Movies like Guardians of the Galaxy are so predictable. You know exactly what is going to happen at every stage and it feels like you are just sitting there waiting for it to play out.

Anyway, I got that out of my system.

I did watch a bit more of VICE. I wasn’t that impressed with what I saw. It was an episode or two from their HBO series. I forget what the series is called. I really liked the shows from Sudan and some others I’ve seen. However, this HBO series seemed melodramatic and over-the-top. They were hyping the danger and insanity and craziness, and it felt manipulative. It didn’t feel real.

Not sure if I have anything else on my mind. No pickpockets on the streets yet that I can see. There is one tiny street beggar outside my window wearing a pink t-shirt and yellow coveralls. Whoops! The kid IS a pickpocket. He just took off after a guy wearing a knapsack on his back. There was a tantalizing zippered pocket on the back. There is a definite market for a thief-proof knapsack. I put tiny padlocks on my zippers, but most people can’t be bothered to do that. And the zippers on my pannier bags are huge, so it’s possible to put a padlock through them. It wouldn’t be hard to design a better knapsack, but it would be too expensive for this market anyway. They tend to buy the cheapest things available.

Time for breakfast, I suppose. Back to the Golden Crust Bakery. Either that or oatmeal and bananas in my room. I buy my bananas from typical fruit stalls. They’re good and relatively cheap, but they are often covered in some kind of sticky goo. It’s organic goo – something that the banana plant produces – but it’s crazy sticky. Like industrial glue. Gets all over my hands. And it won’t come off.

A couple of recent interesting dreams: In the first, I was inside a brutal type of prison camp. It was inside a building, and we were kept inside big communal rooms. There were no clear details about any of this, but this prison was a savage and vicious place filled with fear. There was nothing we prisoners could do but comply. A little girl – the daughter of the prison warden – came into the room. She was a tiny blonde-haired thing wearing a flowered sun dress. She saw me and said that she wanted to cut my finger off. I knew it was impossible to resist. If I resisted, something worse would be done to me. So the little girl took out a knife and began hacking and cutting and sawing at the middle finger of my right hand. She wasn’t very strong, so it took a long time. But she kept at it until the finger had come off in a bloody mess. There was a sudden shift in time and my finger was back and whole and the little girl came back inside the room. She announced, again, that she wanted to cut off my finger. This time, I resisted. I laughed and said no way. I wouldn’t let her do that. This set off an instant commotion. A group of adults in ceremonial robes came rushing into the room and set up a kind of tribunal. I was on one side of a wooden wall with a glass part at the top and an opening at the bottom. The leader of the tribunal was a frog-faced woman and she sat on a chair set up high and started screaming at me about obeying and complying and what was this about my finger not being cut off? This woman suddenly went down on her hands and knees, and like some kind of mutant animal raced across the room to the wall. She stuck her face under the gap of the wall and screamed and snarled at me and snapped at my feet with horrible jaws. She had transformed into a strange type of animal. It was clear that something very bad was about to happen to me for resisting, and I locked eyes with another prisoner, a man that was clearly a good friend.

Then a Japanese man came into the room. He was there to take off my finger, and there was a sense of relief because being a samurai, he would take off the finger with one clean sweep of a sharp knife or sword. This Japanese man came to me and I was forced to kneel in front of him. He took my hand, but instead of taking out a knife or a sword, he picked up an ice pick – a simple wooden handle with a sharp needle on one end. He suddenly started stabbing at my finger with this ice pick. He was doing it with the speed of a sewing machine and stabbing it through my finger dozens of times a second sending blood and flesh flying. When he stopped, my finger was completely cut in half except all the nerves. He had managed to miss all the nerve endings and the nerve strands going through my finger. Why he did this was soon clear. He took out a wooden finger clamp with a sharp edge and a wooden handle. The severed end of my finger was clamped into this wooden device. Then he turned the handle and the sharp blade sliced upward and took off a thin slice of the end of my finger. With the nerves still attached, I felt it and the pain was unbearable. I found my eyes locked once again with the prisoner that was my friend and his look conveyed sympathy for my pain. But there was nothing he or anyone could do. The Japanese man kept turning the handle and slicing off more and more of my finger until there was a small pile of slices. These were then passed around to all the other prisoners and they were expected to eat them. The very last slice from my finger was placed on my left forearm and I was told to feed it to the young girl in the flowered dress. She came up to me on her hands and knees and placed her lower lip on my forearm in front of the slice of my finger. My finger clamp was removed and I used the bloody stump of my finger (with the nerves still dangling) to try to push the slice of my finger into this little girl’s mouth. I did this very slowly and carefully because it was so painful. When the slice went into her mouth and she began to chew, I woke up.

The second dream fragment is not so detailed. I was driving in a car with a friend – my friend driving and me in the passenger seat as if we were going out for coffee. There was no set-up or lead-in to the situation, but my friend turned down a dirt and gravel road that went into a rock quarry. We were there to steal something or do something that involved a long-running feud we had with a group of black men. We had to get down into the quarry, do something or get something, and then drive out. But when we got to the bottom, the group of black men suddenly appeared at the top of the gravel road. They pulled on a rope or wire and it rose up to block the road. We were both filled with incredible fear and panic. It wasn’t clear what this rope meant, but if it got fully into place, we would be trapped and something awful would happen to us.

My friend hit the gas hard and raced up the incline. But, for some reason, I was no longer in the car. I was at the bottom of the quarry just sitting on a chair. My friend managed to get past the rope and raced down the highway in the car. I was suddenly a sitting duck and I got up from the chair and begin to run. I needed to run away from the black men and up the side of the quarry and get to the road and hopefully my friend would be able to pick me up and we could escape.

But as often happens in my dreams, I couldn’t run. My legs were like lead and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t run very fast. I was agonizingly slow and the black men got closer and closer. I just managed to make it to the road when they caught up with me. The leader grabbed me and started to drag me away to my death. All I could do was pull away from him. I saw a car coming down the highway, and I used all my strength to pull myself and this black man out onto the highway to block the way and get the attention of this car and get help. It turned out the car was not my friend but a police car. The police officer saw me at the last second and hit the brakes and his car slid sideways down the highway and nearly hit us. But, as often happens in movies, the police officer did not help me. He just started screaming at me and pointing his gun at me and yelling at me for being such an idiot and nearly getting hit by his car. I tried to tell him that this black man and his friends were going to kill me and that I was in trouble, but the police officer wouldn’t listen and drove away and left me to die. Climax: I woke up.

This last dream stuck with me because I was so annoyed at my dream self for not fighting back. Instead of punching this black man in the face and ripping his throat out with my teeth and jaws, all I did was try to pull away from him and drag him out into the highway. This happens all the time in my dreams when I’m in a conflict. I don’t fight. I just struggle. I lay there in my bed afterward and go over the dream again and again. And I change what I did. So instead of running away from these black men, I go up to them and beat the crap out of them. Instead of trying to pull away, I haul back and smash him in the face. I’m trying to train my dream self to be a bad-ass and really fight. But my dream self isn’t so cooperative. Occasionally, I’ll go all bad-ass and fight. Most of the time, though, some Japanese dude is slicing off my finger and feeding it to little blonde-haired girls and there’s nothing I can do about it.

 

 

Tags: Deadliest Catch, HBO, pannier bags, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, USB, VICE