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and I know you do. If your question is, "Will you have this next payday?" I think you know what the answer is. Somehow, I just think you do.

I just totally rode my bicycle from Guomao all the way home. It's about 11 km, which google says is 6.8 miles, and red lights included at rush hour, dude, I rolled that shit in 24 minules. I was all pulling past electric bikes, dude. Fuckin' sweet.

If I do this for like a month, everybody who comes to this journal will think I rule, and won't realize that I was a total loser in 2007.

I own a house that I live in. This house has three bathrooms and two occupants. And the other occupant, my wife, is manic about her desire to use only the one in the master bedroom. So I have to cover the other two in addition to wakeup pees in the master bedroom. It's a lot of hard work, but not when you have frequent, low-viscosity stools, which is why I drink 5 cups of coffee a day.

Just got off some previous entry madness.

Misanthrope much? I'm like a real-life Roast Beef from Achewood. I am a walking punchline. Fear me.

Now I have to make a bunch of new entries to push all the crappy old ones to the back. And I don't even really have anything cool to write about.

I have a new hat. That is a thing I have that is cool to write about. It's like a grass fedora. I wear it and people walk slightly to the side of me.

Actually, y'know, being cut off from this was probably good for me. There's about a year and a half of drama y'all asses didn't have to read.

I have another thing that's a Treo, with Little John Palm, which you should install on your phone, because it emulates every retro gaming system out there.

I'm married now. I'm seeing a year and a half of drama being replaced with, "Yoga Teacher made me do the dishes at 6am today. We have a new showerhead."

Did you know that I know about 1/3 of PHP now? I do. It's pretty sweet.

All those promises to update more...how 'bout that huh?

Here's another one! I think I'm getting better at these promise things...

Livejournal's unblocked?!?!?!?!

After years of suffering the indignities of 404's and server timeouts, I have finally removed my ass from the figurative chair (it's still firmly implanted on the real one) and installed Tor. That means, folks, that I'm back. Bigger, faster, stronger, and better than ever. And with lots of crap I've been wanting to say. So, here's to renewed blogging (next to me is a bottle of horse milk booze; those crazy Chinese, eh?).

I hope this works. LJ has been blocked for a long time, and I've still not found a decent way to download a backup, nor have I really found a service that would let me post the backups. Sometimes I hate China...

Then I can at least still update.

And update I will.

Every time I update though, it feels like I'm expending my best energy on worrying about who and what's revolving in my social life, which in the end, is, as everyone who's stumbled across this can probably tell, worthless. I've got five years of entries detailing nothing more than what I'm worried about, and I'm usually worried about the same things.

My life, though, hasn't worked like that. I've never meant this like I'm saying it now: things have changed.

So much.

Did I ever tell you about Yoga Teacher? Because this summer, after my brother came over, alive and unharmed, I started dating her. And it's been 5-6 months, depending on where you count the start date (but that's not really important to us), and we're happy. I'm happy. For fuck's sake I've never been this happy. Everything came together at kind of exactly the right time and taught me what it means to be happy.

I've never liked settling accounts with my own regrets, but that's what it's meant to me to have a blog. I have to explain myself, but this time, that's all the explanation you're going to get. The future and the present aren't just more intrusive, they're more compelling and important than the past has ever been.

She was the woman V was staying with when I met her. I haven't talked to her since the day I kicked them out, but Lu and I have talked, and we're still friends. I should call her soon. The yoga teacher and I, well, we got along from the beginning. We agreed on everything, same sense of humor, all that. And we started dating, then we moved in together, and as is, it's good.

I've quit teaching. The English school grind was fun for awhile, but then it just got repetitive, and then it just got to be a drag on the things I was trying to steer myself towards, and so I've quit and decided to be a freelance...something. Translation, for now. The money's not much, but then I've not been chasing it seriously either. It's been just over a month and I've already found three clients, one of whom is running a film festival, and I'm his house translator. It's incredible fun for a phrasing mook like me, and my work is, in both fact and arrogance, the best I've seen. I haven't seen much, though, and I'm excited to see more.

I've turned into a motorcycle fanatic. The R9, which anyone less masochistic would have sold after a week, took me until June to unload. It was plastic, failure-prone, overambitious like the Amazon Reader, and a joke to anyone who knows anything about the machines. I gave it up for a bike which has recently been nicknamed "Black Velvet" by a friend of the man I sold it to, my brother's roommate. This summer and fall saw lots of changes, and I think the pair of motorcycles that carried me around were symbolic of more than just changes in my attitudes toward machines. Black Velvet, as it were, was a 1998 Zhufeng 150cc, although it looks like a much larger capacity machine. It looks like a motorcycle should, black and silver, bulges and curves around bare engine parts, and seats as wide as a man. It was big, low, loud, and smooth. The entire bike feels solid. Not a thing on it was plastic. And when I thought it was stolen (it wasn't, just misparked), the bike I got to replace it was even bigger. It was shorter, silver, slightly more squat, had a sharper, louder roar, and controls that were just a slight bit stiffer than the Zhufeng. They were both, in every way that a machine can be, beautiful. After I bought the silver bike, I sold off the Zhufeng and then proceeded to have it taken by the police, a risk illegal drivers take in Beijing. If you live here, you understand why people take those risks in the first place, with traffic and public transport what it is, and police only enforcing the law when they want a profit or a quota. Those two taught me to love motorcycles, but being swiped down in the street and told to hand over my $450 keys taught me not to waste money and effort on things that aren't safe. Two weeks after, I went to the outskirts of Shunyi, handed over $70, and drove away with an ugly but ridiculously functional 48cc bike that could have outrun any of what I'd driven before. I used to laugh at those guys driving around on awkward-looking heaps, but not anymore. They're more maneuverable and more reliable than anything with flash. And what I lose in eye candy, I'll make up by telling people that I only paid 600 kuai for it, a quarter of what most people consider a good deal on a Vespa ripoff, reminding them that it uses a third of the gas they consume for the same performance, and then I'll take it over curbs and leave it unlocked while they worry that their baby will be stolen. And if the cops get it, I'll go get another one. They can keep eye candy, I'll take competence, security, and foresight.

My brother is here and he's doing well for himself. Whatever flaws he won't grow out of will become a part of who he is as a man, of which he really is turning out to be a fantastic one. I was right, you know. What he needed to get out of his self-destructive patterns at home wasn't discipline and hard work, it was opportunity and perspective. I wish I could compress all that he's shown me he's capable of in a few sentences, but that's impossible. He is ballsy, intelligent, tasteful, interesting, funny, and it all amounts to someone who's just plain good at life. It's been seven months, and what he's built in that time shows more than that he's put his identity as an exurb banger behind him for good, it shows that he is, in fact, infinitely capable of whatever he wants. And this made me look again at some things that I'd taken for granted about my family. They were, for as long as I can remember, a taint on my past. They were something I ran from. They were to be forgotten, negated, blotted out with all the pieces of my own identity that I could erect and force other people to see. They were wrong, one of society's mistakes that should have been prevented. And maybe that's still true, but what is also true is that they imparted a lot of potential to my brother and I, and they did their best in their circumstances, which though I'd acknowledged intellectually, I hadn't taken full stock of morally. I owe them, all of them, a lot. Seeing what my brother could become has forced me to come to terms with my own anger, and look at where it was directing me. It was directing me to be afraid of some of the most powerful aspects of myself and deny myself the basic happiness that belongs to any human being with the good luck and grace to grow up, love. I was afraid loving them would lower me, and I was afraid loving others would cause me to repeat their mistakes. But they didn't make many mistakes, really. And that's why, when my father told me he had bought a plane ticket a little over a month ago to come see us, I wasn't too afraid. I didn't want to avoid him, and though I thought about bringing up the past and trying to confront him for an apology, I put that thought away. He was more than decent. He impressed my friends, appreciated our hospitality, brought gifts, and was just happy to see me. I have no need of being afraid of ending up like him, because he's a decent human being, and more than that a pleasant, interesting one, which I'd never had the guts to think of him as before. And he's accomplished a lot, when you think about it. By whatever measure you consider him, he's done as much as any man could and stayed happy and sane. I respect him and I love him, and I even like him. As I've learned to do a little better with myself.

The yoga teacher helped too, of course. Having her here, seeing how much she cares about me, with none of the fights, none of the suspicions, none of the demands and irrationality that have marked my relationships in the past, has done wonders for me. And I hope I've returned the favor. I can't impart at all how much she's given me, at what seems like no cost to herself. And if she has that capacity, I must too. I'm not really afraid of being alone anymore, I'm not afraid of deprivation or not succeeding, or even of those measurements, because whatever I'm doing, it's okay with the people around me. I'm afraid of not making her happy, of not living up to what she thinks of me, and despite having been through this in the past, I've never been so free of the other fears. I'm just afraid of failing her, and so far I haven't done that. I've never wanted to be less selfish.

And so when I bought that new motorcycle, it was more than just a replacement. It stands for...I don't know, just letting go of what isn't necessary anymore. Its existence by itself is impressive. Its failure rate is impressive, the way that even though the battery, breaks, lights, speedometer, and all else was broken on it, the engine was still fine, and still is fine. The way it's so freakin' butt-ugly but still gets everywhere it needs to go and motorcycles like it are the mainstay of tons of small businesses in Beijing is impressive. The cost was impressive. The fuel economy is impressive. The fact that one kick starts it in the cold is impressive. Its universality is impressive, because it's one of a million on the road, and its uniqueness in the expat community distracted by esoteric concerns like what restaurant in town has the best pizza while it hires other people to clean apartments is impressive. That I have a car and still prefer this is impressive. And, here in China where women are still women and men are men, where it's not uncommon that women won't touch dirty peasant machines like this if they don't have to, and resent it if they do, the yoga teacher with a really nice car, really nice apartment (she owns), and all the other status symbols the Beijing yuppie generation aspires to saw the advantage immediately and wants one for herself come spring. That's impressive, both in her and the fact that I've ended up with someone who hasn't lost their head for having accomplished all the typical material goals this society stresses. It's a fantastic machine that impresses anyone with the insight to understand it. Which is the kind of person I can aspire to be, and which I've made huge strides toward being since I updated last.

My Chinese? It's...I won't say good. I still stutter sometimes. And I'm still not reading as fluently as I'd like. But after four years of living in it, I can make a living with it, and have a relationship with it. I don't have a laowai accent, I don't usually confuse grammar, and people rarely speak slowly to me or treat me with special care after we've talked for awhile. I'm rarely treated differently than anyone who makes their living translating or teaching, which is something I'm immensely proud of and humbled by. I'm a man.

And I'm surrounded by people who love me. And I've made accounts with my past. I'm not hobbled by it anymore. It's a collection of experiences that have given me some incredibly powerful tools to contribute, and I know I can, and I know I have. And I'm almost 24, which I think isn't too bad of an age to have acquired the arrogance necessary to take risks with myself in order to contribute. There is, as usual, nothing to see here. It's what you'll see anywhere else, but right now it's on my turf, and if you're curious, that's what I've been up to.

More to follow.

Temperance, friends!
‘Tis the only way to forestall the oncoming disasters!
Ah yes, those disasters
They’re brought on by dusty notions and trifectas of globs of brilliance
And assorted menagerie of mellefluence
Bounded by
Nothing!

Ye compulsive goal-setters!
Nay! Bestow yourselves not unto the shimmering temerity of our age!
These timorous days of happy uncoupling
Of these bulwarks our saviors (though paired or for naught)
Tradition and audacity
Spare audacity only for thy resplendence through moderation!
Forward, though solely if forbearance be your guiding virtue!

Because, dude, like,
It’s kind of annoying when you don’t finish shit you start
So don’t start too much
But
Um
Start some stuff,y'know?

I have no odd talents that make me interesting, but I compensate with my dazzling armament of useful ones.

Related: "Quirkster" should be a word. Like hipster, but someone who thinks that their quirks rather than their choice knowledge of subcultural errata makes them interesting. I'm gonna start using it. You should too.

What strikes me most about this article isn't the tragedy or the sentimentalism. It's this idea of the endurance of a tradition of books, knowledge, and curiousity. While you might not know it, since most of its legend has been drowned in a torrent of polemicized politics, soppy-eyed ogling of History and Culture, and tinkytoy recitations of entrepreneurial Wealth and Opportunity, Beijing is just another of those cities. It's a city of books, brains, ideas. It's a burbling Glasgow too shy to show its nerdy side because it just got a new Trans Am (er, um, stock market & stuff). What struck me most about this article is just how much it reminds me of Beijing, and how much it makes me realize there really are magical places and people on Earth. It's a tragedy what's happening in Iraq, and it's a sin to say this, but one day Iraq will be fine. Baghdad get rich, everyone in the world will drool, and when the drooling gets old, like it's starting to get for Beijing, those books will come right back out, and that's what everyone will remember. The Beijing, at least, that I know, isn't the Beijing of Baidu and knockoff Prada, it's the cyclone that propelled Lu Xun to change the language and inspired Beijing Opera and xiangsheng and does the same today with snarky Qinghua graduates who've read more books than you ever will and can swear with more vitriolic wit than a Louisiana shine runner. Some places are just that way, y'know? Baghdad is one of them, and so is Beijing. Thank god it is.

Eat shit. This is why.

I am pissed. Royally. If this was real life, if I knew the name of the person responsible, I wouldn't let it pass without repercussions, but this isn't real life. I've had things I wanted to blog, and I haven't been able to log in. I figured site problems, but you know, five days of issues for a site like livejournal isn't normal. I didn't want to think it, and I knew it had happened before, but after four days I had to check. This is the first time I've ever had my rights fucked with like this. Other blogs were censored, fine, I didn't use them. But this time it's ME. Not cool.

I hope it's unblocked. All I wanted to do was whine a bit the last few days. If it's not, no biggie, I'm writing through a proxy and can continue doing that.

But let me say this - the Chinese government says they block sites to prevent people from hearing unsuitable, unhealthy talk that threatens national security, sure, but much more importantly they say they do it to protect people's mental health. I promise, that from today, I'm going to do everything in my power to tear down the mental health talk. "Internet addiction" is their excuse for all of it. And from today on, I'm going to combat that myth everywhere I can. It's the least unchallenged and most widely believed piece of bullshit related to censorship that exists in this country, and it has to stop. Now.

Just had this class, "Education" was the topic, and we got on to minority language education. The situation for a lot of non-Han groups in the PRC is that due to language preservation programs and the national English meat grinder, your average minority has to study three languages, English, Mandarin, and their own starting from 1st grade and going all the way up to 16, and further if they're not too drained by stress and want to go to college. And you know that image in your head about the Victorian-era Latin schoolmaster in England, who smacked you if you got the answer wrong? Well, thanks to the traditional culture in this country being an authoritarian, disciplinarian, patriarchal clusterfuck, you can imagine that guy as your typical language teacher in China, minus the hitting (at least civilization has advanced far enough that not much of that goes on anymore), plus massive incompetence thanks to substandard universities. Now that's not to say that there aren't good teachers in China, there are lots, but it is to say that no good teachers really want to work in the underfunded rural backwaters where most minorities live. The ones who go out there, especially the English and Mandarin teachers, are usually the ones who can't get higher-paid jobs elsewhere, because they're unimaginative twats incapable of empathy or creativity because their mothers never hugged them, and their teaching (but mostly their students) suffer for it.

So anyway, you come back to Beijing and look at what I'm doing in my classes. This program, regardless of the actual quality (which is not something I have any control over save my own teaching, so I'm not in a position to comment), is something that's both original and almost ludicrously needed. A semi-structured, courseless, non-graded, affordable class that's essentially conversation with crutches. Run 3 times a day, every day, all day, the pay is good, the environment is relaxed, and the whole idea is to think on your feet in a second language. Now, if they can pay me six times what anybody else my age is making in this city for the prices they charge (most expensive membership plan is Y15/hour), I don't see why the principle can't be extended to needier areas in different languages. Han labor is cheap, requirements for teaching certifications aren't stringent in the private market, and it would absolutely not be difficult to gather up some intelligent, interesting people who understand Mandarin and would be up for an adventure, go west/south with them, and do this kind of class for non-Han groups. The prices for Westerners teaching English in low-income areas might not bear this kind of class in English, at least not yet, but 5 kuai an hour is something any Uyghur or Miao can afford, and 6000 kuai is something any smart college graduate in Beijing would be glad to make. So, let's put this one in the refridgerator, and take it out when I (or someone else, if you're down, I leave all my great ideas to the first taker :) ) have the time to deal with it.

I'm not though. Like, I didn't tell you that Lu and I made up, but V's still pissy. And I didn't really mention that I went to Hong Kong, and the fact that I'm sitting in a net bar in Shenzhen waiting for the train ticket office to open would surprise most of you. Or that I'm kind of seeing this new girl, not the bad speller, but this rail-thin something who likes dirty jokes and actually isn't someone who it's easy to sum up in one or two sentences. Not sure if it's going anywhere, and she is depressive (which she admits and knows and seems to deal with; Depressive will not be her name, her name won't be Condom Delivery either, which is exactly what happened on a Thursday?Friday? morning last week and which will be a sex story that rates right up there with outdoing Ed Norton in bed; no, her name will be Chef of Doom, because, um, that woman in the kitchen doesn't bear discussing), and we'll see what happens, but for now "." And I didn't tell you that a student of mine started dating my couchsurfer and nobody likes her but everybody likes him. I've switched from the infamous Derby, with 1.2 milligrams and enough chemicals to pickle your lungs, to the ubiquitous Zhongnanhai .8's, which don't make me cough, but make me less of an individual. They are THE whitey cigarette. I need another light brand, man. What ever happened to quitting? I'm gonna. Tomorrow.

Herr Kraut is gone back to Germany for a few months. The Journalist moved into my neighborhood and has been with the Pilot for four months, and she's got a good 8 years on him. The Bad Speller is learning to take the bus and extending more invitations. The Cool Guy, a nerd who lives with a man who dates a former model with a child and who comes to all the parties because he's single and Stemmy and Stokey (those two's names) are most certainly not and calls me sir, also lives in my neighborhood and we'll be hanging out. Mr. Everybody-likes-him (the couchsurfer) and The Translator (my student, so called because she constantly says things in Chinese and in the same breath translates directly to Chinglish so it's like redundancy was personified and crammed into a corner on my couch) are settling in and making friends. My resolutions to stay the fuck away from Kai and Shooters are two resolutions I've been able to keep, although I may have to extend that ban to Drum and Bell. I know Houhai has its trendyfucks, but good god, is there some magnetic force that drags trendyfucks to certain bars? No, I like the people I met there those couple of times, but I could SMELL their musk all over that place. Anyway I've made some interesting discoveries and set up my Sanlitun offices at The Saddle, but I didn't find anyone who wanted to go to the ballet with me. Oh well, it'll still be there into March. The vacant room is going to be occupied by a guy from Kentucky who still plays Magic online and who'll be possibly the first person who'll share my passion for emulators and USB controllers, and I will officially be the only whitey in Beijing who pays less than 1000 kuai for a room AND offers similar arrangements to others. Down with luxury complexes, you idiots, down with them. And I met The Poo, who likes movies more than I do and owes me 12 models. Socially, I've been fucking BUSY. Exhaustingly so.

Work is jerking my schedule around, and I'm kind of worried about the hits to my income and my integrity. I'm not on a salary, and with the dent to the hours over new year's this month and the lack of hours next month (they're opening new centers and kind of want me to work at them, but they don't open until the middle of March and I have absolutely no idea what the new classes will be like, they'll probably be a lot more structured than the ones I've taught up to now, and I STILL don't really know what those classes will be), I may have trouble making ends meet. Plus, well, I haven't really been able to give my students a fixed schedule since December. I'm going here, going there, ending up at one center or another, it changes every two weeks, and who knows. Relationships with the students have been my strong point in this job, and the scheduling changes are wreaking havoc, and every day I have to deal with new students...whatever changes the head office wants to make are great (they've hired a new manager and are planning major, major expansions and changes this year), but it's never pleasant to be the blunt instrument with which those changes are effected. And I despise uncertainty, which is the flavor work has taken on recently. Now that I'm out another 4,000 (yes, another) kuai because of scheduling messes, and with all the free time I'll have during the next two weeks, it's time to take a serious look at expanding where I get my income. One of the things I'm doing tonight is scrounging around the classifieds and wanted ads on various websites and seeing what there is. I could write. I always say that, but I could.

I don't know. I'm sleep-deprived, a little hungry, and playing things by ear. I wrote a little while ago here that major changes were under way, and they are. They're going to get a lot more tangible soon, because I'm done thinking about it. Station's open and I'm going to get those tickets. After coffee. Fuck.

"I learned the hard way, a man never approaches a woman."

I heard there was more drama.  And so I kicked the girls out.  It hurt.  Lots.  They left me notes saying they understand, and they cleaned the house, made me rice...but I can't have them screwing with my relationships.  I can't risk that again.  This was a hard decision, but I hope the right one.  God have mercy on me if it's not.  I don't want to be going through life turning on friends like scorpions because I fear their knives in my back. 

That's basically three people I cared a lot about sliced off in one day.  Plus, as goes the usual Beijing social scene, new people are coming and old are leaving, so I've got a couple new friends, guys this time, but two more old ones are leaving who've been mainstays. 

Ain't it all pathetic?  You might love someone, but when they wrong you, they wrong you, and I can't let it happen again.  Right, well, enough of this.  No more friend drama.  I'm a better person than to let it all clog my goals. 

She's either crazy or can't spell.  God damn. 

The girls are starting roommate drama.  "Do more dishes."  "Turn your music down if we're watching a movie."  And they're ordering.  I don't listen, but I don't really answer either.  This isn't good.  Roommate drama is nasty stuff, because it turns relationships sour faster than anything else.  Shit.  Alright, well, I'll think of something, but if you've got advice, let me know. 

Disclaimer: I'm not that messy.  They're blowing it out of proportion, and they're just generally people who organize their lives much differently than I do.  I am a pulse cleaner, about once a week, and it's a very thorough, organized process.  They, however, clean daily and throw things together so it all LOOKS organized.  Maybe I shouldn't let them live here, but I love them.  The really shitty thing is that knowing them, they won't stop nagging if I cave, and they don't listen to me when I complain (I mean, fuck, I told Vera literally dozens of times not to put so many clothes at once in the washing machine or they won't get clean, and she still doesn't listen; Cao Lu still showers with my towel on the rack, where it gets wet, and I've asked her countless times to move it so that it doesn't, but she won't), so I usually don't.  It would suck so, so much if this thing fell out over how to clean the house.