Friday, July 10, 2009

a greenland shark in the red sea

Last night I had a dream that I was on a yacht in the red sea, and I wanted to get in the water for a swim but all people on the boat told me not to get into the water because there were 3 huge sharks. Everyone went inside for lunch or something so I jumped in the water and started snorkeling. Then a guy came out to see why I hadn't come in for lunch and he started screaming at me "the shark is coming to bite you!"

So I surfaced and saw a huge object coming towards me. I went back underwater and saw it was a greenland shark. It was huge. There were 2 others as well.

I was puzzled because greenland sharks are only found in frigid waters. In fact, it's one of my goals to some day do an ice dive and maybe see one. They are big sharks but not dangerous.

Anyway, I asked the shark what he was doing in the red sea. He kept answering me but I couldn't understand him because his voice was all messed up, like when you really try to talk underwater. He kept swimming close to me and finally I realized he was saying "pet me". So I started to pet him and then the other sharks came over and wanted me to pet them as well. But then I accidentally cut my hand on one of the shark's skin. I told them I'd have to go back to the boat and they were really sad.

So I swam back to the boat and everyone could see I was bleeding. They told me to get away from their boat. I tried to explain that I had just been petting the sharks and had cut myself but everyone was really afraid and wouldn't let me back on the boat. Then I heard this guy yelling in arabic, and I turned around to see the three greenland sharks swimming towards me in an aggressive manner. Then a guy said "you see, that's just a trick they play, so then they can bite you". I tried to tell them they were wrong when I was suddenly pulled under the water by a huge force.

Then I woke up...Shut up Jeffy. How else am I supposed to end my dream blogs? So spare me the text message after you read this making fun of me.

a robot chicken and were pig fight over uranus


So I finally finished the painting that my friend in the UK requested. He asked for a painting of a robot chicken fighting a were pig with light sabers. I think it may be the worst painting I've ever done. This is the first draft of it.

I started it when I got back from the software conference. But, I ran out of paint. Then I had to stay in DC, then go to Korea, blah blah blah, so I just returned to it this Wednesday.

It was really hard to finish because I had custom made the colors for the sky and grass and then couldn't replicate them. Also, I wanted to put some binary stars and planets in the sky, but it turns out those things are pretty hard to paint.

I was trying to fix the painting and it just kept getting worse and worse. Finally, I added uranus in the corner and said fuck it, it's done.

The good thing is, my friend has kids, so if anyone ever sees the painting he can just say one of them did it.


Wednesday, July 8, 2009

"look at my penis" - my male behavior postulation

During a brief email exchange with a friend of mine, during which my blog about married guys was discussed, my friend, who is male, told me that I'm probably not as hot as I think I am, and that guys get into this state where they will fuck anything, including, to paraphrase, and elephant or a knot hole. That for some reason triggered a memory of a line from my super ex-girlfriend (but not my favorite line from the movie, which is "why did g girl throw a great white shark at us?") where this asshole guy is telling this bartender that the two happiest days of his life were when he graduated from harvard law school, and when he met her.

And that's when I finally realized something, which was maybe what that book he's just not that into you was about, but I missed the point. Guys talk shit. All the time. Especially about sex. I think it might even be fair to say that 99% of what comes out of a guy's mouth is bullshit. Which explains why guys always say they love you but then fuck someone else or turn out to be married.

And, I would guess, this behavior is caused by guys not being able to process their feelings. If you intimidate a guy, he says he loves you in the hopes of bringing out your softer side. If a guy doesn't like you, he'll say he loves you so he can brag to all of his friends about how much he doesn't like you and how much you like him. If a guy wants to fuck you, he'll say he loves you because he thinks that will get you into bed, or he is not sophisticated enough to realize there is a difference between lust and love. If a guy does something horrible to you, he'll say he loves you because he thinks that will make you feel less hurt.

This goes for everything guys say, not just the I love you bullshit. So, from now on, when a guy says something to me, I'm going to attempt to translate it into what he is actually trying to say. I think that will make things less confusing for everyone. Body language may be a good indicator.

One thing I've noticed is that guys will try to bring your attention to their penis if they are trying to make a connection with you, sexual or otherwise. They do this by sitting with their legs open, resting their hands on their thigh (likely thinking the whole time "watch my hand move over here, and now look! it's resting near my penis! okay, just look over a little more...maybe I should move my fingers...yes! you're looking at my penis!"), putting their hands near their pockets when standing, etc.

But, just because a guy is doing that doesn't mean he is being sincere, so maybe body language won't work. I think I'll start observing facial tics and involuntary eye spasms.

And, on a side note, maybe I should start a new business venture where guys can log on to a web site and show their penis. I'll hire women from China to look at the penises. Maybe I'll give them some phrases that they can send back to the guys about their penises.

stop that hole!

As if things aren't hectic enough with my impending departure to the middle east, travel, work, and requests for paintings, I got home from Korea to discover a hole in my back yard.

At first the hole appeared to be just a foot or so out into my yard. I was hoping it was caused by the rain we've been having, but after my dad decided to dig into the hole, we discovered a much worse problem. It turns out there is an old sewer pipe in my yard that cracked. I had to dig almost 5 feet down to find it. And it was cracked in two places.

I was thinking back to two summers ago when the same thing happened to my next door neighbor. So when I saw him outside I called over to him and asked what he had done to fix his hole. He looked into my yard, where I had, by that time, a huge gaping hole that I had to dig to find the cracked pipe, and he said to me "are you going to bury a body there?" ha ha ha ha

Anyway, he paid someone a million billion dollars to fix his hole. But after conferring with my dad, Jeffy, and my UK genius Pascal, I decided I would fix the hole myself. The experts all recommended tar paper, concrete, and some gravel.

So I went to home depot. I couldn't buy tar paper because it came in these huge rolls larger than the back seat of my car. I asked the guy if he could just cut off a little piece for me and he said "There's no such thing as a little piece of tar paper". Then I got the concrete which was heavier than fuck. It was so heavy I could barely steer my cart. My grocery store mishap kept playing through my mind as the front wheel of my cart spasmed out every time I got near a display.

Anyway, I used the old tar paper I found in the hole, dumped the bag of concrete into the hole, added water and started stirring. The directions on the bag weren't too clear because the amount of water used was in proportion to how elastic the concrete was supposed to be. I had no idea how elastic it should be, so I just guessed how much water was enough. Then I put gravel on the concrete and went back into my house to check my email...

Only to find an email from Pascie recommending I "check with the authorities" before blocking up a sewer pipe. Oops. But I'm pretty sure it's not a pipe used for anything because I had to have an inspection done before my garage was built, and there were no water or sewer lines going from my house into my back yard. Oh well, I'll be out of the country if everything goes to, hee, shit.

When my neighbor got home last night I showed him what I had done and he said it looked fine. He also introduced me to his new puppy, and said that someone from the government came by his house asking about me. Nice. No wonder why I can't get a date in denver...

Monday, July 6, 2009

the general's banquet

Well, the first two meetings I had on Thursday were a waste of time. Me sitting there doing nothing while everyone talked in Korean. People talking trash about the tool. The sales guy didn't even know what an audit ID was so he asked me in the middle of the discussion. I was getting totally aggro at everyone for talking shit about my software in front of me (I love the software I support). I wanted to bitch slap one of the customers into next year because he said the tool wasn't working and the problem was not the tool, it was him.

Then we went to talk to a gov agency in Korea. I walked in exhausted, because it was 5 in the evening and really hot (no air conditioning in most of the offices). I figured I'd be sitting around waiting for the translator to ask me a question in English as I had the previous calls. Instead, I walked into a packed room and there was a presentation I had never seen before. The colonel running the meeting was like "you can begin doing the presentation". I was like shit shit shit! But what's a girl to do?

So I cranked through the slides, fearing for my life every time I hit the "next" button because I had no idea what was on the next slide. I was sweating bullets. The presentation lasted 2 hours.

At the end the colonel I presented to said that the general was so pleased with my presentation that he wanted to take me out to dinner. All I wanted to do was go back to my hotel, take my shoes off, and collapse. But instead they took me to a traditional korean restaurant. All the sales guys were psyched we got asked out to dinner. Then I told the general I couldn't eat pork, so we got beef. Later the sales guys were like "Nice job! Beef is 5 times as expensive!"

We were in this room with sliding doors, a low table, and mats on the floor that we were supposed to sit on. The general made me sit in the center of the table as the guest of honor. He sat across from me and stared at my legs while I tried to find a way to sit in my skirt and not pull a Sharon Stone. One of the korean sales guys gave me his jacket to cover up. The general and I had a conversation, but I have no idea what he said because his english wasn't that great, even before he started drinking. Alcohol was flowing like the rain we had had all day.

I started to worry the general was trying to get me drunk, so I used a ruse that I learned about reading a book on Korean etiquette. You're never supposed to fill up a glass of alcohol until it's empty. The general caught on to this and started filling my glass, saying "we do this american style". So I started shifting my glass around with everyone else's. The sales guys were more than happy to drink my drinks since the general wasn't putting out for them, and it saved me from getting drunk.

As a side note, one of the sales guys told me Korea consumes the second largest amount of alcohol in the world. Russia is first. I totally believe it. I couldn't understand how everyone drank so much and was still standing.

I was sitting on my bad knee in a tremendous amount of pain. The food was great, marinated beef (cut with scissors because the koreans think having knives at dinner is rude, perhaps they worry about sharp instruments and drinking), this corn thing, tofu with hot peppers, some vegetable that was a really cool acid green color, 8 kinds of kim chee, and what was described to me in english as "vinegar soup". It's impossible to describe the taste, which was kind of like vinegar, but it's the coolest soup I've ever had.

The only real bad thing I did at the dinner was say something inappropriate to the general. He was telling me how he had been stationed at Lowry AFB and how he missed the winters in Colorado. I started to get excited about snow (it was so fucking hot in the room) and I said "DUDE! You should have SEEN the snow we got two years ago!"

The room went dead silent. The officers attending the dinner all paused, mid eating, and stared at the general. I was suddenly like oh my fucking god, did I just call the general dude???? Shit shit shit.

But, he laughed and told his troops that "dude" is an english term of affection, and that I called him that because he was so americanized I forgot he was korean. Uh. Nice excuse. The rest of the night everyone called each other dude because the general was doing it. One of the sales guys said that is my mark on korea and the government will never forget me because I did that at dinner.

Then the dinner was finally over. As I was standing outside the room putting on my heels (even in bare feet I was the tallest person there) and the general grabbed my arm to "help make steady of you". Then we went outside and I tried to shake the general's hand and thank him for dinner. He said "No shake, american style (the phrase that preceded all the inappropriate things that happened to me in korea)" and then he suctioned himself on to me like a little bear. I looked at the sales guys, unsure what to do since I couldn't move my arms. They finally peeled him off me and his troops escorted him back to the base.

We got back to the hotel and the sales guys insisted we get a drink. Because I was with them they could drink and eat for free. They were really psyched that the presentation went well (they were probably worried after the previous day's little shit show). More drinking. I had one beer and then tried to stay awake waiting for everyone else to finish their evening because it's considered rude to leave people when you are out with them.

But, I finally deserted everyone for the hotel because I was tired as hell. I got lost getting back to the hotel from the bar. Seoul is such a difficult city to get around in everyone has 3D GPS. There are all these side alleys and unmarked streets and it's easy to lose your way.

The final result of my trip is that the general wants me to come back and train his staff. My liver would never survive. Plus, I'm bad at the fake smiles when people talk to me and I have no idea what they are saying. Or so the sales guys tell me.

And, a quick word about them. They were the absolute sweetest, most thoughtful people I have ever worked with. They called me "the iron woman" because my computer bag was so heavy. They insisted on carrying it for me and had to switch off turns with it. They were always worried to get me the best food in any restaurant we went to. They ordered a huge thing of fruit at every bar we went to so I could eat dragon fruit (one of my favorite, except when it's dried out). They even called me on the bus back to the airport to make sure I got on the right bus.

They told me I should move to seoul and marry a guy there because they treat their women like they are queens. There's none of the chauvinism you find in some countries. So far seoul is my favorite country I've been to in Asia.

Unless you consider Turkey Asia. Which I don't.