Trouserpress

This original Trouserpress, alas, has pressed its last wrinkle. The PHP has gone delinquent on me, and rather than mend its ways, I have re-started the blog at a new address, and in snazzier form. I hope.

There are a few good posts on the old press and I leave them up.

If you are an avid and regular reader of Trouserpress (if there is such a person), you might want to consider bookmarking the new page or resetting the RSS because all future posts will appear there.

That new location again.

Trouserpress may be going dormant for a while.
After many, many hours peering under the bonnet and getting my fingers black with code, I think I have figured out what is ailing Trouserpress. However, I have not decided the best way to address the issue or how much time I can devote to fixing it.

I am anyway setting up a new blog designed to make Weed and so on more visible to search engines and that should be up and running before long.

So have a good kip Trouserpress. Sleep well.

Something is deeply dysfunctional in my Trouserpress.

First it was a little stylesheet problem and since trying to fix that, the blog will only show in two default themes. If I apply any other templates the whole thing disappears from the net with ‘fatal error’ messages. Presumably the fatal error being me trying to play with php without an adult present.

So, this is the result of me sprucing up the site as part of my Weed campaign. Don’t let me ever straighten your collar: your head will fall off.

Another so: this is yet another day sucked into the cyber black hole where I could have been writing or curled in my basket picking my nose. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. The Man doesn’t want Weed on the streets expanding people’s heads.

Music: Holgar Czukay, Movies
Mood: Postal
Reading: the writing on the fucking wall, pal, and what are you going to do about it?

I note that since I last checked I have acquired a dozen new incoming links to this blog from complete strangers. Yet all I do here is rant inanely. There’s literary power in that there fulmination. And if there were money in them links, I would now be able to retire and go to heaven.
Jolly gosh pooh-sticks and the twinkly-twangly sound of harps.

Some people spend a lot of time and money looking for the inner child. I’m looking for the inner adult. I wonder what he/she/it/they is/are like, and will he/she/it/them get on with me and treat me nicely?

I was in a café in Kyoto yesterday, getting lunch when a trivial incident revealed the profound ramifications of the smallest of our actions, and caused me a minor loss of life.

I ordered my sandwiches and my iced tea at the register, and waited in line at the counter for the young man working there to make my food.

There was a woman ahead of me in the line, very respectable looking in a boring sort of way, and somewhat dour in a dour sort of way.

Her sandwich when it was served turned out to be a huge sausage in lettuce on a bun. Oh, good, I thought, my food will be next. I was against the clock and very hungry, both.

However, my sandwiches — a prosciutto  with parmesan cheese and a spicy chicken — were not next.

The woman was squinting at the lettuce in her sandwich.

Suddenly, she was pointing out to the staff a blemish on the lettuce leaf that rose rather majestic and sail-like from her sausage sandwich. She had to point  out the blemish very carefully because it was so slight as to be almost invisible. It was a slightly brownish hue, possibly a bit of a bruise, and about the size of a finger print. This, as I say, on a large, fresh and crunchy looking leaf.

Instead of calling the lady a daft hag, and telling her not to be such a fuss pot, the lad behind the counter apologised and bowed abjectly for attempting to poison her with a semi-invisible stain and discreetly tossed the sandwich in the bin. In between fixing drinks for other customers he began making her a new sandwich from scratch.

The line was growing behind me. I was still against the clock. I was still hungry.

The lady shamelessly folded her arms and stared defiantly at the sandwich lad, unaware or uncaring of the havoc she was wreaking on the universe.

You see, there was a lot going on now. A little dimple, a minor black hole had appeared locally in the fabric of space.

First into this black hole was this needless waste of human life. The sandwich maker was spending time, valuable life time that he can never recover making a sandwich he had made perfectly well once already. How long did this take? He was very fast, but with interruptions, lets call it 3 minutes. That’s also three minutes of the fussy lady’s time as she waits to be served a sandwich that has already been served her. That’s three minutes of my life and of the lives of the four people waiting behind me. That’s 21 minutes of human life time spent to no useful purpose by a woman who has an aversion to merely nearly pristine lettuce.

Next into the black hole was the death of the pig. Yes, a pig died to make that sausage — not only that sausage, I grant you, but a living, breathing animal was slaughtered to make sausages and chops and bacon and prosciutto for us. I’ll bet you the pig did not want to be slaughtered, and died very much protesting and struggling to stay alive. I eat meat, but I never forget where it comes from. If a living creature has its life taken to make food for us, we should treat  that food with respect. Throwing away that sausage was great disrespect to the pig.  The selfish act of discarding the sausage  devalued the life and sacrifice of that intelligent beast.

The clock was ticking. I had to get two sandwiches down me and get myself back to work so that I could my duty of earning the money to feed my three children and keep the company president in cigarettes and golf clubs. This was causing me stress, which is also a known killer. How many future heartbeats was this prima donna of lettuce costing me? What about the people in the line behind me? What plans and commitments were falling apart for them? What biological depredations were they suffering?

And we have only so far discussed the waste of life. What about the impact this act had on the environment? That food was transported from one place to another in big smoky lorries, it was processed on machines that guzzled energy and gave out more fumes, thus contributing to global warming and resource wars. People were dying around the world over the price of oil or scratching the earth with sticks to find water that has been diverted by agricultural combos. All that too was being sucked into this dimple in the fabric of the universe.

I did the only thing I could under the circumstances. Call me mad and impulsive, but I waited mutely in line with everyone else. I regarded the woman impassively, but no amount of impassiveness brought about any apology, acknowledgement or sudden epiphany. She just puffed herself up and crossed her arms and adopted a pre-emptively defiant mien.

I wanted to hand her a spread sheet, an audit of the situation; the time, the money the natural resources. But I didn’t. I waited and I silently cursed her further for the time I knew I would have to spend writing this blog post.

[This actually happened in July 2006, but I was distracted before I could finish it and post it. I came across it recently while rummaging in my files.]

Turning 45 and having my birthday fun whisked away by the wife, I was ignoring my birthday, as I have most years since I went 30.

However, a very recent realisation has compelled me to reinstate it.

I found out this week that my birthday, September 21, is the International Day of Peace or Peace Day as decided by UN resolution.

Apparently, beginning in 1982, the UN decreed that the third Tuesday in September would be Peace Day. In 2002, they decided to fix this to September 21.

Presumably, this was done in recognition of my famously non-violent, pro-cat views.

I now think that that September 21st is a darn cool day to have a birthday and couldn’t be much more appropriate for me if they had declared it International Wine day or World Forgetting to Shave Day.

A former girlfriend has September 11 as her birthday. Ouch.

The idea of Peace Day is an annual one-day ceasefire, where all warring parties everywhere stop what they are doing and have a drink to celebrate my birthday and reflect on the utter arrogant stupidity of violence.

So tomorrow (September 21) you are not allowed to shoot anyone, let off any RPGs, drop any cluster or thermobaric bombs or even argue with your sibling.

I am once again proud of my birthday. I won’t just be 45 tomorrow, I will be a non-violent, anti-war 45 and I now wish I had arranged a proper surprise birthday party for myself.

Whoever designed this anti-drugs poster seen at Oji station must have been well stoned.

It is bad enough turning 45 as I will be soon. It is worse that your wife nicks your birthday fun.

I arrived home on Thursday night, hot puffed and pooped. However, I was intent on having an alcohol free day and getting an early night.

The house was in uproar as usual, with the usual arguments about TV, showers, homework and computer games. The TV was blaring to make itself heard above the din and in the middle of this my wife declaiming about our overdraft and all sorts of money stuff.

There was something in the post for me: a birthday card that my mother had sent me about ten days early. I opened it up and there was a ten thousand yen (£40)note inside which I stuffed in my pocket. Nice. That’ll do for some Glenmorangie and/or some books or CDs.

Meanwhile my wife’s lament about money was grinding on. I started to feel guilty about the 10k in my pocket — never mind the fact that outside is still standing, rotting and unused the scooter she bought two and a half years ago for 120,000 not including tax and insurance which she has never, and I mean never, used.

I dug out the note and offered it to the wife. “Do you want this?”

“No, it’s … OK.” And she took the note and stuffed it in her wallet.

I felt suddenly very silly and hard done by. I made straight for the fridge and grabbed the last can of beer and sulked off to my room. After the beer went a few glasses of wine and a very large vodka.

Well, I didn’t want a birthday anyway. I’ve had too many already.

Going back to Douglas Coupland’s JPod (see prior posts) for a moment, I read a passage in that book today in which a character is assigned an essay for her creative writing class: Describe your life quickly

I thought I would like a crack at that assignment even though I am going to earn no credits for it. Here’s how it came out. Hopefully.

–

I get off the train and get on with the 15-minute walk home up the big hill. Despite being the rainy season it’s not peeing down but it is un-agreeably hot and humid. I am as usual carrying a bag on each shoulder. One contains my laptop and the other a bunch of books and stationary and copies of the magazine. I consider calling E for a lift back to the house but also think of global warming and her cold wrath at being distracted from the 20 million other things she has to do. I imagine lying down in the road and being able to roll up the big hill while gravity temporarily reverses itself.

There is a convenience store across the road and I wonder hopefully whether I need anything. I have given up crisps and today is a non-drinking day and, anyway, even if it weren’t, there’s plenty of beer and wine at home and I know immediately that despite this being a non-drinking day I am going to have a cold Kirin Gold as soon as I get back and then I am going to have some wine, specifically a bit too much. I know that I have resolved not to drink Monday through Thursday and I know that at the weekend I got through way too much beer and three litres of red and that I ended up on Monday night in Kanso with Nagaijin where we had six beers and a bucket of lemony fish tails and that there’s no reason in the world why I should be tackling more booze on a Tuesday night.

I set my GPS for the fridge and head on up the hill.

My mind wanders over workaday rubbish and the row I had with E last night about how fed up I am with being a suburban white collar drone and as I get to the leafy, mossy grounds of ancient Tatsuta Taisha I remember how I should be taking the opportunity to think about my novel Rumblebum which is coming on very slowly at the moment. I rehearse the names (good names) and personality descriptions of some of the principal characters, then some of the plot points. I try out some bits of dialogue in my mind. I have an insight and try to follow it through but instead find myself thinking about Smarties and how if you suck them, all the colour comes off and they are just these grey pellets in your mouth. If you suck some more the hard coating softens and cracks and you can suck melted chocolate out. However, if you spit out the Smartie as soon as it goes grey, you can prise off bits of the shell with your finger nails and eating this shell you realize it has absolutely no flavour of its own.

At this point I am at the top of the hill and taking the short cut through the car park of the shrine. I am sure this is disrespectful but most people do the same and even zoom through here on mopeds with cigs stuck in their gobs.

Tonight, I notice a family actually skirting the shrine’s grounds instead of going through the car park. Opposite the entrance , they stop, clap once and bow. This is hardcore. You only normally do that right in front of the orange gate that is the entrance to the shrine proper, not when still out on the street. And most people these days don’t bother at all. It’s like crossing yourself before the altar in a church or dipping your fingers in the font and somehow managing to do both before actually going inside. This family seem very pleased with themselves. I can hear their satisfied laughter.

I reflect on the folly of faith but as I do this every day I quickly get bored and give up. Then I feel nervous. What if these religious nutters are right? What if I die and find myself in an afterlife confronted by a supreme being. After spending my entire life poo-pooing these concepts I would feel exceptionally foolish. Worse, what if E were there. She has bags and bags of faith of the silliest kind (God lives in Mt. Fuji and the people of Okinawa may be the descendants of the Lost Tribe of Israel). What if she were right? I was now passing paddy fields and I could hear her in the next world exclaiming at me “Told you! Told you! You never listen to me! You just think I am a stupid woman!”

I can also hear lots of frogs. The paddies are newly flooded and the rice-lings are planted and in daylight you can see that the water is full of tadpoles. Cranes and storks hunt here for crayfish and minnows and the like. Snakes get in the fields after the frogs. I try to count how many species of frog there are by the sound of their voices. Five, I reckon. Several individuals will be squashed flat on the road tomorrow morning when I pass this way back to the station. I once had a dream of starting a graphics company called Deadfrog Productions.

The frogs remind me that I have to explain to E why I am home as early as 8pm. We had an issue about it this morning when she suddenly announced she needed me back early to look after the youngest and I explained that I had an important editorial meeting at the mag in the evening. I couldn’t explain that this was the actual same editorial meeting that I had postponed from the previous night with crafty ruses an wiles in order to have six beers and a bucket of lemony fish tails with Nagaijin at Kanso. When I postponed the meeting again this morning, my magazine colleague J made other plans before I called back to reinstate the meeting. So I was arriving now two or three hours early, important un-rearrangable meeting bagged till Thursday.

It was like some kind of rehearsal for my arrival in the afterlife.