Filial son Badhummus rises early to call home for Dear Mum's birthday. On the other side of the world, the clan has just returned from a celebratory dinner. Dear Mum, overcome by three glasses of wine, is unable to receive the call. I find myself in ribald 3-way conversation with Dear Dad and starving artist Little Brother.

“Aw, crap,” says Brother. “We didn't play the Anal Game on the ride home.”

“How could we?” accuses Dear Dad. “You conked out in the back seat.”

I beg them to clarify, quickly.

The Anal Game, it turns out, is a trifle to while away time on lonely stretches of highway.

“Just put the word anal in front of the names of cars you pass,” explains Little Brother.

“Ah,” I say. “Anal Explorer.”

“Anal Probe,” says Little Brother.

“Anal Protege,” adds Dear Dad.

“If you introduce a band to the Anal Game while they're on tour, they will love you for it and buy you drinks,” promises Little Brother.

The experiment yields mixed results on the streets of Taipei. Among my first encounters are the Anal Panther and the Anal Super Exceed, but they are soon outnumbered by such jabberwocky creations as the Anal Cefiro and the Anal Altis. Also, the Anal Virage—had it been the Anal Virago, we'd have had a real winner on our hands.

Scooters provide zestier sport. Badhummus himself straddles a zippy, fully-insured Anal Jockey, and he jostles through traffic in the good company of the Anal Fiddle, the Anal Fighter, the Anal Forte, the Anal Freeway, the Anal Folly, the Anal Fever, the Anal Fuzzy, the Anal Force, the Anal 風, the Anal Breeze, the Anal Dick, the Anal Movie, the Anal Majesty, the Anal Vino, the Anal Jog, the Anal XPro, the Anal Going, the Anal Cabin, the Anal Attila, the Anal Easy, and one 50cc Anal Let's.

Badhummus comes home to luxurious 3° Tower (so named for the angle the building currently leans from the horizontal—ask me again after the next earthquake). Climbing the stairs to my fifth-floor penthouse, I bump into the young couple who live on the third floor. Once again, they scowl at me. They must think that I'm the one who drops cigarette butts in the stairwell, pukes outside their apartment, steals their mail, parks a motorbike in front of the building's only door, has a yapping dog, burns paper money so near building's door that the stairwell fills with smoke and ash like a giant chimney, screams in shrill Hakka at children and relatives, and hosts weekend-long mah-jong parties. Innocent on all counts!

There is no Internet access in the penthouse. Badhummus likes his peace and quiet. However, this sometimes prevents me from commenting on current events in a timely manner. For this reason, I thought the photos from my visit to the “anti-corruption protest” would languish on my hard drive, unseen by the masses.

Good news, however, arrived in Tuesday's paper. The indignant hordes are returning to Taipei from their tour of the south. The plan is to stage another demonstration outside the Presidential Office on the Double Ten holiday, raising a ruckus that will cause President Chen to resign in shame.

So, here are a couple of photos. I stopped by one night to see if it was as big and exciting as it looked on TV. It wasn't.

I was disappointed. I didn't get my hoped-for glimpse of Shih Ming-teh (the ostensible ringleader), Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (who, a week after announcing that it would be inappropriate for him to attend, attended) or PFP chairman James Soong (who, given that he was convicted of tax evasion six weeks ago, had cojones of steel to show up at an anti-corruption demonstration).

There is a problem that should give the thoughtful protester pause, however, as they gear up for Tuesday's demonstration. The other day, the Taipei Prosecutors' Office delivered a much-anticipated report on its investigation into Sogo-gate, one of the main planks of the demonstrators' outrage. For months, we've been hearing that first lady Wu Shu-jen accepted gift vouchers for the Sogo department store, in exchange for which she intervened in the ownership battle over said department store. This accusation, for which I have long waited for a shred of real evidence, was pronounced to be without foundation. According to the prosecutor's spokesman: “There is no evidence that Wu received vouchers in return for acting on behalf of certain businessmen who sought to win ownership of Sogo.”

When the protesters gather next Tuesday, perhaps one of the organizers will offer an apology. Several offenses come to mind:

• Disrupting traffic in central Taipei for an entire week.

• Disturbing the many residents and schools in the area.

• Making it seem like a good idea to sit outside in the street when, you may recall, it rained like a motherfucker all week.

• Goading thousands into doing an inane thumbs-down gesture over and over to the beat of a amplified drum.

• Inducing politically-active parents to dress their dogs in uncomfortable red clothing and force their children to recite anti-Chen poetry.

• Creating a political atmosphere that makes it impossible for Badhummus to wear either of two colors that flatter his eyes and complexion: red (now associated with the movement) and green (the color of the president's party).

• Keeping real news off the front page for months.

• Increasing crime and killing cops from overwork.
  

But I won't hold my breath. Instead, we will see more of the same, and the old fogies will be back on Ketagalan SPELLING Boulevard waving large ROC flags. As the hours pass, the elderly among them, unable to bear the weight, will allow their flagpoles to dip down over the road, once again inadvertently spearing Badhummus from his motorbike as he tries to zip past.

Badhummus returns

...from the dead, if we were to believe last night's report from a certain twelve year old. (He would not lend me his drawing, but I have duplicated it here in my most artistic hand.)

I have been minimally employed for a fortnight now, and it has been delightful. Each day, rain or shine, begins at 9:01 with a run in the park. In the past, I only made it to the park in the evenings and on the weekends, when the running trail is blocked by teetering toddlers, hand-holding lovers, cyclists, umbrella-bearing old women, and stray dogs.

How different in the morning! How peaceful the park! While others work or attend classes, the park is left to me and several Southeast Asian domestic helpers who are walking their elderly or canine charges. And a foreigner (not me) who crosses the bounds of propriety in the pursuit of a good tan.

Best of all, no panicked screams emerge from children lost within the topiary maze, as they frantically use their cell phones to call their parents for help. At such times, my compassion overcomes my desire to keep my heart rate up. Stopping by the maze, I shout advice over the top of the hedges.

“Everything will be fine. Just put your right hand on the right wall and walk forward. Whenever you come to a choice, turn right. In this way, you will soon find the exit.”

Of course, I can't help but add, if you encounter the Minotaur, the only thing to do is pray for a speedy death.

In twenty years, these children will chuckle and wonder who was their savior that day, that deus ex machina speaking strangely-accented Mandarin.

Devoted readers are forgiven for thinking that Badhummus was lost in a labyrinth of his own. No, I have been in America. I found it a country even stranger than the one I left. They spoke constantly of matters I did not understand. Who is K-Fed? Who is Paris Hilton? (Not, as it turns out, a hotel in Paris.) What is Project Runway? (Nothing to do with the extradition of prisoners.) Why do so many people intone “It is what it is” while nodding sagely?

Time to get back in touch with what really matters: I am now sitting in a coffee shop with the past two months of Next magazine. In a few minutes, I will be up to speed on Jolin Tsai's breasts, love life, and product endorsements.

She comes to the balcony and slips into my room through the screen door. She moves quietly to the bed and finds me sleeping still. With feathery caresses, she begins to tease me awake. Delightful.

But her mood soon turns tempestuous. She wails. She overturns the wastebasket, knocks over the ironing board. She lifts and drops the panels of the ceiling, showering me with dust.

Her name is Bilis, the first typhoon of the season.

Sadistic TV newsroom producers have already selected their youngest, most petite reporters and dispatched them to the coasts, each with a camera crew and a NT$35 disposable plastic poncho from 7-11. There, the cameraman will lash himself to the satellite van while the reporter, eager to prove her mettle, will cling for dear life to a lamppost, shrieking incomprehensibly into her microphone as howling squalls threaten to snatch her from the ground and throw her to the hungry tides.

At lunchtime, I will cross the street and enjoy the televised entertainment over a warm bowl of Fragrant Spicy Tiger Noodles. I can hardly wait.

Map stolen from http://www.cwb.gov.tw/

Historical grievances intrude on the workday as colleagues submit, via e-mail, incontrovertible evidence of Japanese cruelty.

Tricked? No, tempted into watching the final World Cup match by four lovely acquaintances. “Come watch the game,” beckoned the sirens after an evening of salsa dancing. The game was to begin at two a.m. and continue until God knows when. I knew better, but I gave into weakness.

We made a tour of the sports bars of Taipei, finding that each had instituted a $500 cover for the occasion. That seemed rather steep, even for the privilege of watching television, inhaling secondhand smoke, and listening to expatriate men grunt and holler, so we went to a place where we knew the admission was free: the “huge egg,” as Taipei Arena is known.

We paused at 7-11 to fill the ladies’ bags with cans of Taiwan Beer, then entered the arena. There, guards diligently detected and removed the beer, adding it to the enormous pile of alcoholic contraband next to their metal detector. Condemned to sobriety, we joined the thousands already inside.

The game was projected on several large screens around the arena. I ascertained by shrewd questioning that the blue uniforms were Italians, the white were French, and the red were referees. I also learned that in football, there are eleven on a side, and not five, as I had believed.

It had been some time since I had seen a football game, and I must say it has been improved somewhat by the high-tech camera rigs that swoop along the sidelines and around the goals. I was also impressed by some extreme telephoto close-ups of kicks and some rhythmic cutting among cameras that lent a cinematic flavor to the proceedings.

I was struck with a vision of the future. Soon—fifteen years, I say—sporting events will be filmed by an array of highly mobile cameras, including bumblebee-sized cameras that can dive right into the action without interfering with it. The cameras will all be controlled by a single console, behind which sits the director, who will be renowned for his ability to single-handedly mix live game footage into a thrilling broadcast. Each game that he mixes will have the stamp of the auteur. He will draw huge fees for this service, far more than the players themselves. His jet-setting lifestyle will be the envy of millions, much like present-day celebrity DJs. When interviewed by trendy magazines, he will say things like “When I am at my console I am one with the game, one with the crowd. Their energy feeds me and I reflect it.”

It will all be silly bullshit, of course, but that’s the future for you. You read it here first.

There, in the Huge Egg, it occurred to me to work these musings into a screenplay, a “Truman Show meets Bend It Like Beckham,” as my pitch would go, thereby ensuring my financial security and paying for the college tuition of my unborn children.

But then I realized I would have to do research which would involve watching more televised sports. Who needs that?

And at four in the morning, Italy and France went into overtime. The damn tournament drags on for a whole month and they still have to go into overtime before they can pick a winner? I gave up and went home.

I was sorry to have missed Zidane’s vicious head butt, though.

In the morning, I discovered I had won $100 off a friend by picking Italy over France. The feeling of satisfaction was slight--it was, after all, the same as winning a coin toss to me--but I'll take the money.