nude highway driving

After a couple weeks of ambiguous hints and much wonder, I found out yesterday I am being sent to the land of little brown monsters with big mouths who fart when they’re mad, angsty pieces of burnt bread and penguins who date seals and hang out with panda bears in tutus.

Yes, I am going to Tokyo! I haven’t been in four years and look forward to a triumphant return - the people of the city will declare a holiday, take off work and march in the streets to celebrate the second coming of the crazy redheaded gaijin. The emperor will cry and families will hug each other. The half-priced shots at Geronimo shall be passed to everyone - after properly being lit on fire - and the rivers will flow with the blood of the nonbelievers.

And, of course, I’ll be doing work. Probably lots of it, but that’s OK. All time in Tokyo is adventure time. There’s a madness simmering throughout the town that we don’t see much in America. The nighttime city is a slice of “Blade Runner” and the people love to share their drinks. If you’re a white guy with a camera, they almost always strike a pose like my friend on the right.

I last went to Tokyo four years ago when I started this job. On my first day of work the editor called me into his office and asked if I wanted to go there … in a week. I never had felt an urge to visit Japan, but after almost a month there I was hooked. Great people, beautiful sights, the aforementioned inspirational madness and okonomiyaki. Sweet, perfect, wonderful-at-two-in-the-morning okonomiyaki.

It’s hard to tell, but I am highly stoked for this trip. I’m excited about the idea of doing some good work (no, really) that will make everything flow better, and I’m ready for more adventures in the world’s most expensive city. I think I’ll be able to pack more into the trip having been there and tested the waters a bit. I hope so, at least.

Needless to say, there will be stories …

So let me get this straight …

It’s illegal for a man to have consensual sex with another man in his own home in Texas, but it’s perfectly legal for a man to go pork a farm animal? I can’t help but think they repealed the bestiality ban after intense lobbying from the town of Crawford.

I have nothing really to add to the backlash against Rick Santorum (others have hit it very well), though I do find it funny (in a “this is disgusting” sort of way) that the Right blames the reporter for shit that came out of Santorum’s mouth.

Let’s do a little Journalism 101 here: It would be wrong for a reporter to make things up about a person or interject his/her opinion in a news story. It is OK, fair and encouraged for a reporter to report what someone actually says. Rick Santorum is a public figure and was being interviewed by an AP reporter for a story. He knows he’s being quoted. It’s not her fault that he said things the GOP (at least publicly) might later regret. It wasn’t her own opinion she was quoting, it was his.

It reminds me of the motto at the Aspen Daily News: “If you don’t want it printed, don’t let it happen.” It’s not the media’s fault if you’re a moron.

You ever get those moments when you wonder why you even bother to try to write?

I get those. A lot.

This blog was intended as a writing practice to help overcome such moments but it doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it’s just a new source of blockage rather than an unlocking of my mind. I’ll want to sit down and make witty redneck jokes in regards to a new movie about “cannibalistic” West Virginian inbreds, but then can’t think of anything funny to add. Or I’ll want to write an inspiringly poignant essay about our eroding freedoms, poor Mike Hawash and the importance of living every day to the fullest - and then waste an entire evening wading through mental cloudiness. I thought I had a creative idea to post about the Filipinos who nail themselves to crosses every Easter and the seemingly heartless cynicism of journalists … but the words never appeared.

It doesn’t matter if I’m trying to work on a poem, looking for ideas for a freelance article to help get me out of my editing rut or writing here, in this blog specifically created to break down the writer’s block and make the words flow - it just sucks sometimes. I had an instructor in college who said (paraphrasing here): Most writers don’t love to write - they hate writing, it’s torture. But they have to. If they don’t, they feel even worse than they do when they’re trying to write. Amen, brother.

Unfortunately, knowing this doesn’t stop the resentment that builds after a night of staring at the screen, coming up with nothing. You watch a movie about the Beats for inspiration and instead feel even more creatively castrated and behind schedule in your quest to set fire to the world. You wake up the next day, wonder if your brain is capable of producing anything creative or worthwhile and start to question why you ever bother at all.

And that’s when you visit Warren Ellis’ blog during groggy morning surfing and stumble across an amazing-ass description of what it’s like to be hit by the “Holy Fire” and why writing is so addictive. You suddenly remember why you do this to yourself and why your struggle to write for a living is worth all these hours stretched out on the racks in the medieval dungeons of your mind.

Now maybe you can move forward.

You know, nothing says that you love America and all the freedoms its Constitution used to afford you and your family quite like a fishing lure.

I know everybody lately is fascinated with the missing Iraqi information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf. And what’s not to love? He’s a great manipulator of language with balls the size of Baghdad. There already is a talking doll made after him. He is a master of untrue hyperbole, saying U.S. troops were “committing suicide on the gates of Baghdad” as missiles flew past his head. I think he should go head-to-head with Ari Fleischer, the U.S. information minister. Sure, Ari has a better grasp of the English language, but Mohammed wraps his lies in exciting statements, whereas Ari clothes his lies in boring-ass doublespeak. And sometimes Mohammed even tells the truth (”I speak better English than this villain Bush.”)

But in all the hubbub over Mohammed and his rise to fame, people are overlooking the all-being masters of this new hyperbolic trend. And I’m not talking about rappers. No, I am talking about the Korean Central News Agency, official mouthpiece of North Korea.

Who can forget their threat to “deal the U.S. merciless blows” or their proof that “the U.S. aggressor troops enjoy exceptional extraterritorial privilege and they are the root cause of all the misfortune and pains the South Korean people”? How can you not love these guys? They are one of the greatest sources of humor out there, and should get their props! Screw my Onion and Weekly World News desk calendars - I want a KCNA calendar!

I know, I know - KCNA works for a pretty evil guy. But then again so does Mohammed. And Ari’s boss, while he doesn’t outright kill dissenters, is no big fan of human rights.

So I vote we have a propaganda showdown between the three countries’ information ministries. Maybe KCNA can pick one spokesperson and we can hold a three-way rap battle just like in “8 Mile.” But, you know, without the baggy pants.