Boss keeps taking me out to lunch, so no sneaking out to an early afternoon screening of Superman Returns until she leaves for Asia again. (There's something, I don't know, romantic about a サラリーマン playing hooky to see comicbook-hero movies. Like those "Kick the Can" Twilight Zone episodes.) I've been priming myself with the Justice League DVD's, squealing with delight at the discover of a few episodes I had missed during its unfortunate broadcast on Cartoon Network, fuck them to hell. Last night I dug out all 39 issues of Grant Morrison's 1997-2000 JLA run, my favorite of his next to Doom Patrol, and inspiration to the whole pantheon-of-icons feel of the show. If they had dramatized the whole "Rock of Ages" arc with Wonderworld and all, I most surely would have creamed my pants.

…But I've decided, this is what I'll get for everyone this Christmas.

Take my word for it, this will be the next "Baby on Board" sign. Just what drivers on SoCal freeways need to start shooting at each other again.

My split with human society continues: no one besides me seems to think anymore that people look ridiculous walking around with Bluetooth earpieces and not the rest of the Borg costume, and now etiquette has failed to keep up with the prevalence of speakerphone-equipped PTT handsets. Hello, you stupid fuck, not only does that beeping noise get annoying after your third exchange of monosyllabic proto-language, but I also don't give a shit what the person on the other side has to contribute to your meaningless existence, much less need it broadcast for all of Panda Express to hear!

Guess I'm kinda bitter about getting a fortune cookie message today that reads, "You could prosper in the field of medicine." Oh, now they tell me.

Wow, I hadn't seen nor heard of this stuff since I was a kid in elementary school up north. (The HuffPo article indicates that it is indeed a regional delight.) Now just thinking about it, like circus peanuts, gives me the shakes.

But how many more weekends of curry rice and Coke will I survive?

Love this video by Ken Ishii. 2003 was just a couple years after Rez.

I was alone, I took a ride
I didn't know what I would find there
Another road where maybe I could see another kind of mind there

—the Beatles, "Got to Get You into My Life", Revolver

Seriously considering taking up the boss's offer to go to Asia for some time to help set up new offices. Sure, there might be a language barrier, but it's like I do much talking here anymore, anyway? Sure there might be different standards of living, but it's like I do much living… you get the idea. I'm told things aren't a huge ways off nowadays, in ever-industrializing China, but who knows, maybe a train-and-yak ride away and I'll find a pristine village with an undiscovered talent like Zhang Ziyi just begging for US citizenship:

I bought my wife from her dad, a farmer who lived in a village deep inside Nam. The price was one waterbuffalo. I brought her back to the states. She walked 3 paces behind me, and did not speak any english,some broken french. I Was the man, untill one day she met a woman from Nam, This new friend clued my wife in on Cal. marriage law, credit cards,and how to shop until you drop. I thought I had it made but this has ruined everything, I am going to take my Wife to the farmer and try to get my waterbuffalo back. [From Craigslist.]

The expiration date on the curry was over two months ago, in case I am discovered dead and the cause thereof isn't immediately apparent.

Frank showed up today with a toy he picked up in Japan, the latest Panasonic "Let's Note", which looks like my Nintendo DS when closed and I swear is about as light. Why he insists on having US Windows installed on it, as difficult as all the drivers are to find in the land of Dell bricks, just to read and write e-mail, don't ask me. (Update: they were nicely supplied in a utilities folder on C:\.) File this under, I Went to Law School for This?

My second DVD from Amazon last week was the recent reissue of The Wild Bunch, which, while not art on quite the order of Once Upon a Time in the West (what is), is also one of my all-time favorites. The bullet ballet, sure, would go on to inspire the likes of John Woo, but to me it's what drives these men; older characters you'd never see leading nowadays, who need only look at their lives to decide what's left to do with them. "Let's go." "Why not."

The last time(s) I saw Zardoz was late at night on Channel 13 in Houston, never as it was starting, and with all the boobies cut. The TV-version ending didn't make much sense, either; you'd see Zed's buddies shouting his name (reminiscent of Boorman's own Excalibur) then the hand prints on the cave wall. Censorship compounded the mysteries of my youth. Sure, it's a goofy movie, and the social-science fiction dates it to the Seventies, but look how it closely parallels the Matrix: the man with a three-letter name is destined, no, engineered to liberate the human race from the artifice of the Vortex, learning everything through "osmosis" and wielding inexplicable god-like powers at the end. At least love, or what passes for it these days, wasn't an issue, so it was cool for Sean Connery to inseminate an army of women.

One way I shall get back at the fastfood industry for contributing to my premature death from cholesterol poisoning is by waiting for them to assume I want the medium-sized drink with my to-go, then asking for a large after they've rung me up, and relying on their laziness not to charge me the difference. Yesterday it was at Rubio's, and today another 18¢ at Chipotle. Tomorrow, the world?

These have to be the best lines in Stephen Colbert's Knox College commencement address: "So we must build walls. A wall obviously across the entire southern border. That’s the answer. That may not be enough—maybe a moat in front of it, or a fire-pit. Maybe a flaming moat, filled with fire-proof crocodiles… It’s time for illegal immigrants to go—right after they finish building those walls. Yes, yes, I agree with me."