2002-10-06 - 4:52 p.m.
#112: No Need for a Holiday Pt. 1
Note to self: And once again I am rather tardy with updates. I was supposed to have typed something up and sent it off to this journal over a month ago to make sure people still knew I was alive; but alas, responsibilities in real life took time that would have been spent writing my latest ramblings on pointless subjects. I would make an exceptionally poor journalist, I think. But I'm hoping the fact that I'm writing this entry in a completely different country makes up for that. Now you get Edwyn ranting away in the heart of Australia! Well, in the heart of Adelaide, in any case....
Well, here I am in Adelaide, Australia, hopefully uploading this entry using a borrowed internet connection before I return to Auckland. Just so people all over the world can check up on me as I try to have fun and shake their heads sadly at what passes for my personal merriment. I didn't have internet access when I wrote the entry down below, nor did I have access to a ready computer (though there was one at the house we're staying at, I didn't have the courage to ask about using it until a week later.... for reasons later revealed in the following entry). Instead, I wrote all of the below by hand, hence the reason why it's so short compared to my usual leviathan sized entries that try to make up for lack of updates. I did embellish some details when I finally got a chance to type it all out, but sadly it's still a bit of a "entrette", not to mention a bit on the unpolished side. Trying to commit a verbal barrage to paper while ones hand is slowly trying to worm a pen across a landscape of white and blue lines is.... frustrating. You simply cannot get the fluidity of thought (or is it lucidity?) that one does when typing in a word processor. But enough of my pre-entry ramblings, here's the first official entry-related rambling about my holiday!
Sunday, 29th September:
My mother and I arrived here in Adelaide yesterday midday, after a trip that started at 6AM in Auckland and spanned all the way to Melbourne before arriving at our final destination. Overall, it was an uneventful trip, though most of that opinion stems from the fact that I was asleep most of the way. I did manage to get a glimpse of one of the prettiest sunrises I've ever had the opportunity to see, though (and considering my love affair ˙ith sleep, that brings the total up to about five. Maybe four. I'm of the pragmatic mindset that goes, "If God had intended for me to see the sunrise, he'd make it at midday") and airline food has always had a special place in that special little spot in my stomach. No really, I'm serious. Whenever I eat airline food, it always causes me to think (in a response that is not entirely unpavlovian-like), "I am eating airline food. Hence I am on an airliner that is going to take me to some place different and exciting." I have the same sort of response to tea. I hardly ever drink tea, except when I'm staying in a hotel, where the offer of free tea, sugar, milk and hot water is far, far, FAR too much to bear for my stingy, grubby little filching fingers. Therefore, whenever I drink tea I think to myself, "I am drinking tea. Hence I am in a hotel that is in some place different and exciting." And yes, I am fully aware that I am an odd person, possibly on the stupid side, why do you ask?
Anyways, my dad arrived just today and we're currently all boarding at the house of a family friend; which would not have been my first choice as a place to stay for a three week vacation, two weeks of which were going to be spent in Adelaide. This is quite apart from the fact that staying with people you don't really know that well often results in one having to put on one's best and most cautious behaviour 24/7. Though there's nothing quite like trying to figure out the homeowners every little personal quirk in order to make relations run smoothly. Like figuring out the amount of time one is allocated for a hot shower. Or the way one is to squeeze dabs of toothpaste to meet their appropriate standards. Or arranging ones hygiene products in perfect alignment with theirs. Most of my examples seem to stem from the bathroom....
In any case, apart from all that, there's also the fact that these friends of my parents were about as fun loving as a pair of small dead weasels. Not that there's anything wrong with being as fun loving as a pair of dead weasels. But what was REALLY wrong was that their lack of vitality was built into their very home. The very STRUCTURE of their home. I recalled (from my memory of the last time) that staying here was not unlike trying to get comfortable in an open grave, next to a freshly dug up corpse (no offence to all you necrophilliacs out there. But, "ew" anyway). I have to admit, I only stayed two nights the last time; so maybe this time with a whole two weeks here, I can learn to appreciate the one-step-away-from-a-funeral-home feel that this place exudes. Or maybe I'll just wake up in a coffin one day and be completely unsurprised. At least this place picks up SBS on TV, now. Might not sound like the kind of thing to be excited about when you're staying in a virtual mortuary, but I have to say this: If I ever needed to write up a list of why I would want to move back to Australian soil.... The wider selection of anime and related products would be number one. But on number TWO, there'd be SBS on TV. So yes, if I were to ever move back here, it would be for the sake of a free-to-air TV channel. Or if my parents were to drag me along. I wouldn't exactly have much say in the matter, really. When one earns only about a thousand dollars in three months of work, one really doesn't have much say in a lot of anything.
Getting back on track: SBS, the channel with the most inspired programme lineup to have ever graced free-to-air television. Not only does every Saturday evening feature some sort of great B-movie material foreign movie (mainly Hong Kong action films, with forays into spaghetthi westerns, Indian musicals/comedies, a whole plethora of strange European films with an emphasis on blood, organs and the occult. And then there's the occasional anime, which is always a definite plus) but it's also the establushed channel for softcore pornography AKA "European arthouse films". Not that I'm interested in that sort of thing. It's just there as a form of stress relief. Should one be needing it. And I'm not going to dig myself into a hole by saying anything further. Even if that action was appropriate in this morgue of a home. So I shall move on.
So far, the first two days here in Adelaide have been nothing short of completely uneventful. I've been spending most of my time sleeping because there's just that little to do. I have a small television in my designated sleeping quarters and I've set up my portable CD player on a bedside table, but these hardly meet the kind of entertainment threshold the average obsessed computer user/gamer has. I need something to shoot. Or sneak around. Or engage in conversation while selecting from a variety of witty and humorous dialogue options that most people could never articulate in real life. Man, I'm bored. Being stuck indoors with no form of interactive electronic goods is not a lot of fun. This would be one of those moments where it would be advantageous if one could drive. Not that there's a lot to do in Adelaide on Saturdays and Sundays. Wait, scratch that. There's not a lot to do if all you want to do is shop. Anything else is probably open to negotiable temrs, but I seriously doubt that; Adelaide isn't exactly known for its wild night life (no matter how much of a "festival state" it wants to be). Even the shopping is mostly piss, but hey! I'm on holiday. And whenever I'm on holiday, I have to spend wildly and with reckless abandon. Which brings to mind that other pavlovian reaction of mine: that whenever I'm spending lots of money, I'm on holiday. A lot of my pavlovian reactions apply to the mental state of being on holiday. I like being on holidays a lot.
In any case, tomorrow is the day we'll begin our forays into the city and the visiting of old friends and family proper, so I really have nothing to account for until that happens. Apart from the fact that I'm bored and nothing is happening thus far. I'm not really sure I'm looking forward to the "visiting old friends and family part". They're always on the awakward side because you haven't been in consistent contact with them for the last three years so you need to catch up with a whole lot of recent and not-so recent events. And by the time you've gotten completely caught up to the present, it's time to leave. So the NEXT time you meet up with them again, the only things you can talk about are events that have long since become a distant memory. So like I said, "awkward". About the only people I want to see on this trip are currently living in Sydney and are hardly likely to be in Adelaide at the moment. I hope that they are, but it's not very likely. And the catching up process is always so much more fun with them.... Though their remarks of me not having changed at all caught me off guard the last time we had a chat. The older brother was studying theoretical physics in the University of Sydney and the younger sister was the youngest person in her class and I hadn't changed at all? Apart from being an even greater intellectual inferior to those younger than I am than I was before? That was somewhat depressing.
What was even more depressing was the fact that I apparently looked physically the same as I did the last time we saw each other (which was when I left Adelaide), and I really couldn't say the same for them at all. Especially the little sister, who had grown breasts since last I saw her. I think it was the breasts that surprised me the most. I mean, she was a growing girl, but breasts? I knew her for seven or eight years when I was still in Adelaide and she didn't have breasts before! And all this talk about the breasts of young girls probably doesn't help my ase of being a supposed closet pedophille any, does it? It's not that I'm fixated on young, puberty barrier shattering girls. I'm also fixated on older, more experienced women. Or nubile women my own age. Basically anyone of the opposite sex whom I believe would freely give me wild nookie if I wasn't so old/young/same age, godawful ugly and didn't come across as being a sad, desperate man who has a fetish for young girls/older women/women in the same age group. But if anyone reading this DOES want a sad, desperate man, is living in Auckland and is female, nubile and really sexy, call me now! Please? I have healthy gums!
Well, I think that about does it for tonight. Scribbling all this down is a damn sight harder than typing it up, and I bet it won't take up as much space on the word processor of choice, either. I'd like to go on about what else was going on in my life the last couple of months, specifically working in MacDonalds and how driving lessons are going, but I'll leave those for another time. When my hand isn't so friggin cramped up.
Well, wasn't that a smashing entry? And now for your personal enjoyment, another entry! This one dated five days later.... Which is actualy right now, when I finally got around to asking about using that old, untouched computer in the living room. Well, when I say right NOW, I mean right now when I'm typing this, not necessarily when I get around to uploading this entry unto Diaryland. And what a computer this is indeed! A 75MHz Pentium with 40MB RAM and a 512MB harddrive! I feel like I've stepped back in time everytime I boot up and it takes 5 minutes for Windows to load. It's a pity I didn't bring along any of my old DOS games with me, because I'm sure this computer would do them justice (albeit with a distinct lack of sound). And now, with the power of a first generation Pentium behind me (and a lack of people to bother me as I write), I will proceed to do an entry on the current events of the holiday as up to now!
Friday, 4th October:
Where to begin? I have so much to report and I have no idea how best to order it for people to digest. Should I start with grandchildren of the people whose house we are staying at? The grandchildren for whom there is no setting between "off" and "HIGH"? Should I talk about one of my childhood friends who actually DID come from Sydney to Adelaide, although on a completely coincidentally parallel trip? How about my forays into shopping for hidden gems in Adelaide that sell anime related products? Or the strange, rather terrible thing I saw on SBS on Monday midnight? I think I'll talk about SBS first. Because I'm shallow that way, and I like to build up an entry by talking about small events first up to talking about big events that span my entire vocabulary of breathlessly overwrought adjectives. But mostly because I'm shallow and I like talking about movies. Who wants to bet that when I say "big events", I mean the shopping?
So, Monday midnight on SBS. There was a promisingly great sounding Japanese movie on at that hour called Lady Ninja - Reflections of Darkness (by "great" I actually mean in terms of popcorn munching. if I had any popcorn to munch, anyway). Sadly, I was wrong to assume that of a great title that conjured up images a lone female ninja that dispatched hoardes of evil ninja and monsters using body defying combat techniques. Instead, what was screened was a somewhat crippled adventure tale set in medieval Japan with FOUR female ninjas (admittedly, that was probably better than the "lone lady ninja" concept) who had to take on a team of FOUR evil male ninjas, to protect the reputation of the Tokugawa emperor by eliminating his FOUR former mistresses (originally it was three mistresses, but the emperor became a naughty little dog thanks to an evil lady ninja who was also white aerobics fitness instructor. I'll explain later). Those of you with half an iota of intelligence can probably guess the bulk of the story at this point, but that's not all that's bad with the story! No, it goes ON.
Not only do these four female ninja take on the four evil ninja one on one, they also take them on in battles using their genitals as a focus for their special techniques. It was rather like watching a live action version of the infamous ninja/demon hentai anime series La Blue Girl, only with a lack of budget and a suspension of belief. The movie played like something that would be aimed at horny Japanese teenagers who were too embarassed to rent a porn video and disguised their shame by watching this terrible excuse for a ninja/porn flick. First of all, the special effects were horribly subpar. We're talking about "NINJA FLASH!" smoke bomb techniques where the actor throws something at the ground, then the camera is turned off while he moves offscreen, before being turned on again to record an explosion of smoke as the ninja "disappears". Either the special effects are a deliberate homage to old school Japanese ninja shows, or 1996 was just a bad year of special effects handling in Japanese cinema.
Secondly, there were fight scenes (proper ones, with ninjas and stuff leaping in from nowhere with katanas flashing) but apparently it was a bad year for fight choreography in Japanese cinema as well. For a country that is just a little bit east of the country that's full of people that have a natural talent for directing some of the best fist/sword/gunfights in cinematic history, there is just no excuse whatsoever. And then there are the costumes. The traditional Japanese kimonos were handled just fine, but when it came to the lady ninja outfits.... They had all the colour coordination of a Power Rangers-styled sentai team. I never knew metallic pink ninja outfits were all the rage during the Tokugawa period until I saw this film.
I dunno, maybe it was just meant to be a stupid little low budget film with no particular purpose.... Well, apart from "get all the actresses nekkid". Now that I think about it, this film was not unlike the films of the American 80s, wherein women where expected to bare a little skin, no matter how incongruous the circumstance. And boy do those ninja ladies bare all at the slightest provocation. Apparently, they can't even fall down from a tree without having the front of their ninja garb ripped open. And if one were to trap a lady ninja using a silly string trap attack, watch out! Cause they'll cause their clothes to explode and then launch multicoloured rubber balls at you using pelvic thrusts and a particularly convenient orifice in the female anatomy! It was so very, very, very bad. And so obviously low budget.
And the WORST thing about the film was that they managed to demean the actresses even further by killing them off after they bared all. Yes, after they took off their kit, they were apparently no longer very important to the story anymore, so the only thing that was left for them to was to die. Naked. While still managing to kill off their ninja opponent, but still: naked. I can seriously see this film being used by some Japanese teens to get off as they see (supposedly) strong women succumbing to their base sexuality and dying in order to maintain their chastity. This is the kind of film that could be used for a research paper on the Japanese sense of sexuality.... It just has all these little touches that reflect the mindset of the director and the sort of audience he's going for, and it's pretty damn ugly overall.
But the ugliest thing (not the worst thing, that's already been covered above), but the UGLIEST thing would have to be: the white aerobics fitness instructor lady ninja. She looked like an escapee from the 80s asylum, with her curly blond hair, her capped white teeth, and her elongated face bone structure that was considered rather attractive in those days. There was no reason for her to be in the story apart from the fact that she was white, and she had large breasts for Japanese males who had never seen white mammaries to drool over. And she could not speak Japanese. She could NOT speak Japanese. Oh, she was speaking Japanese, but she just could NOT speak it. I have never heard the Japanese language so mangled in its prounounciation before (except when I mangle it. but that's on PURPOSE). When she first started speaking, I thought she was just speaking some strange European language (since the Japanese seem to be big on strange European languages) but then I heard cries of "noo jootSUE!" while she was performing a technique that involved spraying the emperor with breastmilk. And then there's the horribly overwrought acting.... Not just by white lady here but by all of the cast. So.... HORRIBLY overwrought.
I just can't go on with this. Trying to disassemble this poor excuse for a porn flick disguising itself as a ninja flick and locating every single particle that is wrong with it is causing me physical pain. This title could very well be entered into one of the B-grade movie marathons occasionally held by the Auckland Anime Club.... But I dare not risk trying to find a discount video store that sells this particular title. Still, for those who would see this film for themselves in order to find out how bad it is, here it is again: Lady Ninja - Reflections of Darkness. And now, I refuse to speak any further about this. Because it's just gone on for too long, and is already more than two thirds the length of my first entry. And I haven't even gotten to the other things I want to say yet.
Whoops, I've just hit diarylands character limit again. To be continued on the next page over!
