So I didn't explicitly say as much in the ol' blog (though I did hint at it in this post), but I left for Shanghai, China, last week on the morning of the 22nd. (However, due to the lengthy flight -- 17+ hours on the way there -- and the +12 hour time difference in that region, I didn't actually arrive in Shanghai until the afternoon of the 23rd. Yikes!) I got back into the area late Sunday night and arrived back in my childhood home around midday yesterday, whereupon I spent a great deal of time sitting on the couch drinking iced tea and watching episodes of "Boy Meets World" (which was so much better before everyone got older and had their IQs halved) and "Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends". Of course, I will write more about the trip later (perhaps in a multi-part SC article), but for the moment I am still too out of it to do much of anything substantial in that respect. The 15+ hour flight was terrible, but the real kicker was the food poisoning that I came down with towards the 2/3 mark of the trip. It pretty much put me out of commission for the remainder of my time in Shanghai and I'm still suffering from the effects (though I am getting better, thanks). If you're ever in Shanghai and find yourself in the Super Brand Mall, avoid New Age Veggie at all costs. Your intestines and anus and non-spasming esophagus will thank you (unless you get food poisoning somewhere else, that is).

Anyway, here are a few pics from Shanghai!

All for now, then. Hope you had a good last week and a great holiday!

Last week I had another dream that I was traveling with the Doctor! This one wasn't nearly as interesting as the last one, though, which featured the First Doctor and the lovely (young) Sarah Jane Smith. This time, I was saddled with Mickey Smith, Rose Tyler, and the Tenth Doctor, the latter two of whom pretty much stayed in the TARDIS cracking jokes and drinking tea while Mickey and I were stuck dodging Daleks and mind-controlled humans and disarming bombs throughout the city of New Haven. My own solo exploits took me to one of the dorms on Yale's Old Campus, where I encountered a number of hostile coeds that needed to be subdued by my fist and one unaffected student who had somehow been sleeping with Rose for the past several months (that whore).

Eventually we disarmed all of the bombs (and though I say we, I did most of the work even here, taking out like 12 of the 15 devices) and rendezvoused in an enclosed hangar area not unlike the boarding area of Space Mountain, only without the huge crowds of people and the blinking neon lights. At this point, the Doctor and Rose came waltzing in, arm in arm, and the Doctor proceeded to wax gleefully about how he saved the day and everything was right with the world and crap.

"What?!" I shouted. "You left me and Mickey to deal with a city full of Daleks and zombies and fucking explosives -- and I don't even know how to disarm a bomb!" The Doctor, in Tennant's cheerful and insultingly dismissive way, responded, "Wellllllll that didn't stop you, now did it? 🙂 " I wanted to punch him hard in the face, but instead I just stormed off.

Mickey had earlier done the same because he'd found out about Rose's infidelity and was pretty hurt -- I shortly found him sobbing in the backseat of the Space Mountain-esque shuttles. I hopped in the front, we shot off along the track, and then I woke up.

Speaking of the Doctor, the episode that aired this past weekend was the absolute worst "Doctor Who" episode ever. Like several of the episodes this season, it was a completely unnecessary retread of offerings from last season -- in this case, "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" -- except here the similarities were so blatant and over the top that this episode was less a retread and more an offensive ripoff and complete and utter waste of time. And what wasn't borrowed stolen wholesale from that previous episode (or from the show 24, which some fools at the Doctor Who Magazine apparently had the audacity to claim had little to do with even the title of this episode) was just ludicrous rubbish. Chris Chibnall should never be allowed to write for television again, especially considering that he was also responsible for the very worst of the "Torchwood" eps (which were also horrible ripoffs of eps from other TV shows, most notably "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel"). The guy is terrible.

FYI, the quotation is from last year's "remake" of The Wicker Man. Pretty terrible film, hence the use of a quote from it in connection with "42"! You can see some of the best and most ridiculous scenes from it in this video on YouTube. Try not to laugh when Nicholas Cage ninja kicks Leelee Sobieski in the face and knocks the shit out of another woman while wearing a bear costume. Those furries are fucking hardcore.

All for now -- I was going to add something about religion and sewing (I've been mending my trench coat and backpack and suitcase with needle and thread and had some interesting thoughts along those lines), but I guess that'll have to wait. Until I write again, take excellent care of yourselves! Ja.

P.S. Wesoteric is now running WordPress 2.2! Not that you can tell. 😉

From the Scams section of the Wikitravel China Travel Guide:

Just as you?re leaving a tourist attraction, a friendly couple approaches you, speaking excellent English. They might claim to be tourists, they might say they're studying at a local university, or the story might go that one person is showing his out-of-town friend around. Since you are walking along together, a very polite, pleasant and friendly conversation starts... As it so happens, the relatives/friends were on their way to a special festival, or going for a cup of tea, so wouldn't you like to come along... and after a short walk you end up in a tea house somewhere in a mall, with no special exhibition in sight. If you go along for the ride you will enjoy a full tea ceremony, with your new friends translating, which does end up being very interesting to see and quite delicious to taste, but unfortunately at a price that is way over the odds. ...

Also beware of the scam operating in many of the larger cities where attractive women or a friendly group of students entice you into a tea shop, bars or karaoke parlor. They show you a menu with a price on it and once you finish your drinks and ask for the bill, they produce a completely different price list that lists everything at much higher rates. It's wise to verify prices in writing or simply to pay in cash up front for each round of drinks.

This sounds really messed up! I hope the roving gangs of hot women do not take advantage of me. 🙁

In other news, WordPress 2.2 was apparently released the other day. Not sure whether I will upgrade before or after I return, though!

Seriously, who gives a fuck if these twerps can spell entirely random-ass words that they would never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use in actual conversation -- or, for that matter, even in writing? They just asked three words in a row that I had never even heard spoken or seen written, and I've read some pretty lofty shit. Not even Lovecraft would use these words.

One of them was "kilim". Even if one did have occasion to use this word -- say, one happened to buy a kilim -- one would likely end up having to explain that it is a rug anyway, since there's a good chance that one's conversation partner would have no idea what the hell a kilim is. So why not just save syllables and call it a rug in the first place? Useless.

And think of all of the things that these kids could have been doing instead of memorizing the spellings of multiple words -- and in multiple languages to boot! Not all of these kids are thin: they could have been outside running around and playing sports and getting in shape. Everyone can stand to be more clever: maybe they could have spent some time reading Plato or something. But then again, they're freaking kids: why not let them watch some cartoons or fire up the Xbox360 and enjoy their youth? Instead they are reading overfed dictionaries for the purpose of competing in some bullshit contest and enriching a skill that has largely been made irrelevant by the advent of Microsoft Word and the F7 key.

I have a monster headache right now. 🙁

I always feel terrible on or around days like this -- when people insist that one should praise certain people for all that they have done and blah blah blah. It's all very well and good if you feel that the people in your life are actually deserving of this kind of devotion, but I don't. The more I learn about my mother, the more it seems to me like she simply regarded getting married and having children as something one does when one grows up. She never put a great deal of thought into whether it would be a good or noble thing to do (which is unsurprising to me now; she never puts a great deal of thought into anything at all and I suspect that she never has and never will), never looked at the world around her to consider whether it was an ideal place in which to raise a new life, and certainly never made the slightest effort to become the kind of person who could rightly and knowingly guide and support a child.

I have often maintained that the decision to become parents is largely a selfish one, since people tend to think more about their own personal desires when it comes to having offspring rather than considering any of the aforementioned points, but I don't think that my mother was even all that fervent about having children -- she was simply adhering to the perceived requirements of her assigned social role. The woman puts more thought into crossing the street than she did into giving birth (twice) because at least in the former case she remembers to look both ways. But even with this knowledge, I would not feel so unkindly towards my mother on this day if she had not been so terrible at it -- which, again, is a function of her willful ignorance and unwillingness to think about anything.

On the surface, she was a good mother. She drove my sister and I to the store and the library to after school activities; she encouraged us to do well in school (though even here it must be noted that she never actually encouraged us to take an interest in any of the material); she bought us cards and toys on our birthdays and holidays; she took our temperature and made us chicken noodle soup when we were sick; she was never physically abusive (though we were physically disciplined from time to time). And yet this is literally all that she did, because she was essentially playing a role on stage. I noted in the parenthetical that she never really encouraged us to be passionate about anything. At best, she tolerated our various interests and pursuits; at worst, she actively discouraged us from pursuing them. The entire content of her guidance and moral instruction was derived from platitudes and aphorisms and shallow religious dicta that were never expanded or elaborated upon.

And the worst part is that, owing to other reprehensible views that she holds -- but has never ever questioned, so they arguably do not even deserve to be called views that she holds -- many times even these supposedly axiomatic rules for living were completely contradicted. If I ever pointed this out -- then or now -- she basically responded by saying "whatever." When I entered college, I practically had to study philosophy, because the entire extent of my previous home training had been a seventeen-year tutorial in how to be an inexcusably shallow and stupid human being. But I have only come to realize that in relatively recent years.

There is a lot more to be said about my more specific grievances with my mother -- and with society as a whole, since one of my mother's other favorite "defenses" is, "Well, I'm not the only person who thinks this way," and she is right -- but I'm getting too angry and tired of writing this so I will have to stop here. Suffice it to say that I lack both the cruelty and the time to give my mother what she truly deserves today -- not that she possesses the required understanding or depth of mind to actually be affected by such vengeance anyway. She basically filled my early childhood with false encouragement and phony hugs and insipid Sunday School advice -- by which she unwittingly planted in me the seeds that likely underlie my strong convictions and beliefs regarding a variety of topics -- only for me to be cast into a Hell in which, I now realize, none of the things that I desire will ever be possible for me to attain: not because they do not exist, but rather because people like her are withholding them from me and attempting to destroy them altogether with every shallow word and action. How, I ask you, could I ever repay her for that?

But my hands are shaking and sticky with perspiration, so I must stop now.