¡Azúcar!

On the way to work, I stopped by the morning market for some fruit. I whiled away a few minutes watching the always-entertaining chicken vendor. She snapped a bird’s neck in one brisk motion and dropped it into the automatic chicken scalder, a washing-machine-like contraption that quickly batters the feathers from the carcass.

I know how the chicken feels. Almost a week after the salsa festival, my neck and shoulders are still sore from two solid days of Afro-Cuban movement.

As a disciple of Terpsichore, I am a slow learner. Fortunately, male dancers in Taipei are far outnumbered by salseras, an arrangement entirely to my liking. That and my other good qualities—still a little young, pretty convincing comb-over, no paunch, wash my hands after using the bathroom, brush my teeth after meals—make me one hell of a catch.

So Friday night has come again. Sore muscles or not, I’m off to give the ladies what they want. (Squashed toes, sweaty hands, and elbows to the head, apparently.)

Further evidence, if any were needed, that I may never grow up: I’m on the verge of wetting my pants with excitement about Superman Returns, which opens next week.

I haven’t been this excited since 1978. It was a whole week after Superman: The Movie opened and my parents STILL hadn’t taken me to see it. After the telly—we were living in England at the time, you see—had shown yet another a clip of the film, I informed my mother that I would die if we didn’t go to the theater the next day. Mum, quite understandably, countered that if I didn’t stop talking about Superman, I would never see the film.

How times have changed! The Superman: The Movie DVD is sitting next to my computer, Christopher Reeve is with us only in spirit, and I am a grown (if not mature) man with a “dentist appointment” next Thursday.

*I think this settles the “gay Superman” question once and for all, don’t you?

A good day for baking: a full report

Eh. Cute, but just white bread.

The woman at the bakery clearly understood my proficient, charmingly-accented Mandarin, but she refused to look anywhere near my face, and she communicated only with hand signs: two fingers for NT$20, cupped hands for "Do you want a bag?" I wanted to cut her down with a sarcastic comment, but refrained. The last time I snapped at someone for this reason, he turned out to be a genuine mute.

Perhaps I’ll visit Billiechick later. On regular days, their cock-and-balls cakes are glorious to behold, and their overstuffed-bikini cakes are ravishing. How could they possibly improve on them?

"It's a bad day for breaking ground for graves." Hopefully, that includes one's own. President Chen takes to the airwaves this evening to address the opposition's bullshit recall campaign. This is an opportunity to silence them with words of logic and moderation--the odds of that happening, however, are slim.

Ever since the World Cup forced me to read the lunar prophecy in the newspaper, I've been checking back in to see what the old moon has in store for me, and I think I'm starting to get it.

Take, for example, today's prophecy: "It's a good day for worshipping ancestors." This means I will be blinded by the smoke and ashes of charred paper money as I walk down the street today.

"A good day for weddings" means traffic will be at a standstill. All around the city, groomsmen of various wedding parties will be shouting into their cell phones, trying to figure out where the groom is or how to get to the bride's house, while their black, beribboned sedans are double- and triple- parked in the streets.

Today is also "a good day for baking." Not sure what that means, but I'll stop by the bakery later and see for myself.

I know you're dying for a full report on this weekend's salsa festival, but that must wait. I only have three and a half minutes to blog today, and I want to share a weird and wonderful moment of my lunch hour with you.

Woman walks dog. Dog has only three legs. (Missing leg is hind left leg.) Woman and dog walk past wall. Wall is on dog's right. Dog stops, sniffs wall. Dog wants to pee on wall. Dog can't figure out how to pee on starboard wall. Could turn around if woman wasn't tugging leash impatiently. Dog grows more confused and desperate. Woman, insensible to dog's dilemma, barks at dog. Dog gives up. Dog is probably now praying for tree to appear on port side.

Apologies to dog for laughing at his distress. Kudos to woman for having a non-cute three-legged dog, instead of a voguish, cross-eyed, overgroomed, inbred, purse-sized model (even if she doesn't understand it).

Sabroso!

Badhummus can take no more World Cup.

Badhummus flees this weekend to Taichung, where he will attend the first Taiwan Salsa Festival.

He will also visit lovely and talented former colleague Miss Chang who, it turns out, was dumped by her South African boyfriend just hours ago. Really bad form on his part--it was for him that she was baptized last year!

Bueno...nothing that five minutes on the dance floor with Badhummus won't cure. Hasta luego!

I rise early again today, wholly against my will.

I slept so well that I cannot remember how I got into bed. Beneath the sheets, I find that I am almost entirely dressed in yesterday’s clothes. My toothbrush is in bed with me; I wonder if I used it. Under my pillow I discover a list, in my handwriting, on the back of some scrap paper: 17 McGuffins. It would seem that at some point during the night, I decided to prepare for a career as mystery novelist.

I would have kept sleeping until noon, lulled by the steady thrum of rain on my roof, had I not been woken by the plip-plip-plip of rain leaking through my roof. Terrific. And typhoon season is just beginning.

Decide to go to work early. Stop off at the breakfast shop on the way, planning to read the paper. There is, however, no news at all in today’s paper. The issue is entirely devoted to coverage of the World Cup, a meaningless sporting event that hasn’t even started yet.

I’m reduced to reading the lunar prophecy: “It’s a bad day for funerals.” Undoubtedly true.

“It’s a good day for breaking ground for construction and repairing warehouses.” Hmmm. Perhaps I should have tried to repair the roof after all; but I feared the wind and rain would sweep me to my death. The weather report beneath the lunar prophecy predicts thunderstorms in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai, but not in Beijing, where they have that sort of thing licked.

One article does catch my eye: “Rowdy fan behavior may be triggered by feelings of inadequacy.” I stop reading after the first sentence. This is hardly news, especially to the hundreds of twenty-something Canadian women who are tonight heading to Saints & Sinners, Tavern Premier, or The Brass Monkey to feign enthusiasm for soccer beside the cream of Taipei’s expatriate male crop—and when called upon, administer comfort to them. Girls are getting lucky this weekend!

Jet lag continues.

I laughed at the devil yesterday, and for that he visited me during my two hours of sleep.

In my dream, I become convinced that a black cat living with me is the host of Satan. I have no proof, but I snap its neck anyway. While I look for a spade to bury the corpse, the beast returns to life, twice as large and four times as mean. No matter what I do—and I try everything: decapitation, microwave oven, drowning in the kitchen sink—the cat comes back, ever more sulphurous and enraged.

I wake up with the sheets twisted around my neck like thick rope. Thunder is shaking my apartment. I am seriously freaked out.

As I gradually calm down, I begin to suspect that yesterday’s auspicious date pollinated a long-suppressed memory from last July, of cat-sitting. Except cat-sitting was worse.

I rise from my bed. It is 6/6/06.

In Hell, MI, they are preparing for a party. I am in my own personal hell right now. I have been plagued by jet lag since my return from Scotland (six days ago!).

I don't know what my problem is; it's only seven hours' difference. But since last Thursday, I have been spending my days comatose in bed (or on my desk). At one o'clock each morning, I rise to swat mosquitoes and catch up on all the DVDs that have gone purchased but unwatched since Chinese New Year.

Actually, I enjoy jet lag, in the same way I enjoy alcohol. It inspires in me grandiose visions. In the wee hours before dawn, I imagine myself capable of finishing my novel, raising money for charity, becoming an entrepreneur, running great distances, mastering a stringed instrument, overcoming myopia, bringing armies to heel with my steely gaze, and giving birth. At such times, I am charming and gregarious.

Of course, no one is around to witness this rare manifestation of my true self. If she were, she would likely be annoyed to be shaken awake before dawn by a raving insomniac.

If only

Fearing for my sanity, I long ago disconnected my cable. Without access to MTV, I don't know if these boys are popular, but I was happy to be passing by when one of them blew up in front of Taipei Main Station yesterday.



Addendum: It turns out that G-boys, pictured above, have had an album out for almost three months now. They have surely already filmed at least one video in which (a) they teach a blind girl to dance, (b) one of them falls in love with the girl that he accidentally crippled one reckless night on a motorcycle, but his selfless love teaches her to walk again, or (c) one of them sneezes blood on his girlfriend's white blouse and, though he puts on a brave face, eventually dies in her arms of consumption (but his spirit is unable to leave her).

If I had not disconnected the cable, I would have known this already.