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Began making my own granitas and slushes early in June ... as a result, I've probably been doing the opposite of my typical habit, this time drinking more than necessary.
My box fan decided to commit suicide around the first week of August and literally blew up in my face, overloading the circuit, as I was trying to tamper with it to bring it back to life. (There's a reason they tell you to unplug an electrical appliance before digging inside of it.) As a result of not having a fan now, I have been getting into the habit of keeping my door cracked open (trusting fool that I am) -- and on one of these particular days late in the month the door was unchained which permitted it to be open wide enough for the world to get a good glimpse inside, and being that it's my routine to tear out of every stitch of clothing once I'm inside my apartment ... well, I just so happened to have been resting spread out 'face up' on my bed in this hot ass room at the time -- someone calling my phone number rattled the air, which drove away the person who had been gawking at me for some time. (I say 'person' because, unfortunately, it was NOT a woman.) I have since draped a big bath towel over the doorway opening whenever I feel the need to keep the door open and let some breeze try to come through here. Embarrassing, to say the least!
As for Christina (July 25), I sent one email, trying to convince her to leave her insensitive mooching two-timing drink-up-his-paycheck slacker of a ''boyfriend'' ... she followed up with one email claiming that things are now worked out between the two of them ... I sent one final e-card telling her she was making a huge mistake, but it's her life and she can piss it away on some no good jerk if she wants to.
And for about the past month and a half or so, I've been occasionally passing by a homeless woman in the downtown areas (usually on my way to and/or from my second worksite) whom I strongly suspect is Susie. I'm always cautious about getting up to close to her or lingering too long while she's sleeping, so it is difficult for me to get 100% confirmation that it is indeed her -- one of the major hindrances being that she sleeps with most of her face covered and almost always wears a knit cap, making her distinctive hair identification next to impossible. From what I have been able to glean from all visual images, however, I am about 90% certain that it is indeed her.
Unmentioned Highlights From Previous Quarter
September 10, 2002 (Tuesday)
Arrived at my second worksite ''on time'' last night, waiting for my work equipment to be dropped off, but ONCE AGAIN (as always) the staff at the main office never cared about making sure that I knew about a shift adjustment (which apparently was instituted over the weekend), so I had to find a way to waste an extra hour before logging in to start my work shift. With the hour earlier adjustment, I now have to be faced with leaving work an hour later, which is really going to screw with my already difficult sleep schedule.
11:20, Hawaii Standard Time.
September 11, 2002 (Wednesday)
(Just some food for thought!)
September 16, 2002 (Monday)
Received the last DVD to temporarily complete my movie library (''2010'' -- the ''Space Odyssey'' sequel) this morning. All that remains now, unless I get the winning eBay bid on Oshii Mamoru's Avalon, is ''Lilo & Stitch''-- which will be released in December --and the ''Urusei Yatsura'' pre-orders (and only God knows when ''AnimEigo'' is going to get around to producing its next pending run).
Picked several breadfruit from the worksite property, intent on trying them for the first time ever. If I find them palatable, I may make it a regular habit just to keep the things from falling to the ground and rotting, presenting slipping and falling hazards.
23:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
September 20, 2002 (Friday)
I am just totally dead tired right now, still dealing with the effects of a relatively mild but still energy draining cold I'm trying to get over.
Baked the first of the breadfruit this morning. It had a scent somewhat similar to sweet potato, and even had a very slight hint of that flavor, but for the most part it was very very bland, with a subtle potato flavor that could be detected from time to time. It probably would have been more palatable if accompanied with butter -- something I don't use in house. The texture was the most prominent feature, having a difficult to describe, sort of ''spongy'' feel to it. All in all, I wouldn't call it a 'gross out' food or anything, it just leaves a lot to be desired. I ate about half of it; I'll be taking the baked remains later and pan frying them.
In more important news:
I am only able to listen in on Wednesdays, and even then I am unable to phone in and participate in the discussions, so I'm limited to doing little more than just listening.
But the topic for discussion on last week's program (August 28) was enough to move me to respond in some sort of way, because, once again, there is drastic need to dispel the myths and look at the facts so many people refuse to believe or admit to.
The topic was ''domestic violence,'' which is ALWAYS wrong and ALWAYS unjustified, and my heart goes out to anyone who has ever endured such hurtful relationships, and I strongly believe that anyone who engages in the physical abuse of their intimate partner (or especially their children) deserve to be punished swiftly and severely.
With that said, I was terribly dismayed that once again our attentions were being focused EXCLUSIVELY on ''FEMALE'' victims (i.e., ''battered women'')!
This severely limited, one-sided treatment of domestic violence issues is horrendously unfair, considering the FACT that WOMEN ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR NEARLY HALF OF DOMESTIC ASSAULTS against their intimate partners! (Independent Studies and Government Statistics both bear this out.)
You did mention one basic truth on your program Wednesday night, in that men are more likely to inflict more damage in a domestic attack due the (general) reality that the male is usually the stronger of the two. But in cases of Female attackers / Male victims, Women are much more likely to use blunt objects as weapons or projectiles, much more likely to wield knives at their partners, more likely to kick, scratch, bite, etc.
The rates of domestic violence against men at the hands of their intimate female partners may even be higher than the statistics that are out there, as most of these studies are based upon ''reported'' cases of DV.
Many male victims will not report an incident of domestic abuse against them for much the same reason as many instances of rape go unreported -- shame, humiliation, fear of exposure, perceived social repercussions, and sometimes self-blame.
Male victims also have the added disadvantage of being viewed as weak or ''Pussy-Whipped'' (by friends, family, co-workers, etc. -- both male and female) if it should ever become common knowledge that he allowed himself to get ''beat-up by a girl.''
There is also the general apathy of the public at large, who don't take female-against-male violence seriously. This calls to mind an incident I witnessed personally a couple of years back, when I was out walking around one night and heard the sounds a woman violently yelling and witnessing her repeatedly punching someone inside her car. Before I got involved and called the police to the scene, several people walked right past the car, seeing what was going on, while another was directing parking lot traffic only a few yards away, and none of them did anything except nonchalantly go on about their own business. No one took it seriously enough to get involved, because it was just some angry woman beating the stuffing out of her husband or boyfriend, and never mind the fact that his little girl was sitting right there on the sidewalk just outside of the car crying her precious little eyes out, hoping that the abuse against her father would stop.
And if all of that were not tragic enough, male victims have to deal with a law enforcement and legal system which is so heavily slanted in the woman's favor that many men do not report an incident of physical abuse against themselves out of fear that they may get arrested and carried away for (a.) defending himself by fighting back or (b.) not fighting back at all, but having the audacity to call the police for his own protection. We hear these horror stories all the time, never mind the fact that women will often make false claims of abuse, knowing full well that their male partners will more than likely be hauled off before any inquiries are made.
This ''light treading'' around women also allows other atrocities to occur and often go unnoticed, particularly where it deals with CHILD VICTIMS of family violence: The US Department of Health and Human Services statistics reveal that in family situations mothers are responsible for most of the incidences of child abuse and child neglect (both fatal and non-fatal), and commit over half of all instances of infanticide (child murders within a family); these same statistics also show that when children are victimized, mothers most frequent abuse their MALE children than their daughters.
And in case anyone is thinking that is all part of some ''woman bashing'' male diatribe or misogynist propaganda, please note that many of these studies are conducted (and the statistical results confirmed) by WOMEN! -- including the ''Feminist Movement's'' worst nightmare, ERIN PIZZEY ... the woman who STARTED the ''Battered Women's Shelter'' movement and opened the first such shelter in the world! (Ms. Pizzey had written a book entitled ''PRONE TO VIOLENCE,'' wherein she revealed many of these truths she learned as a result of opening and operating women's shelters, and has subsequently received death threats against herself AND HER CHILDREN by so-called ''feminists'' and ''women's groups'' ... the very people she was trying to help! But TRUTH does have a way of bringing out the worst in people with an insincere and disingenuous agenda.)
I speak as someone who was once a former ''feminist'' ideologue, who believed that men were never the victims of anything, except whatever they perpetrated against one another, and that women could be nothing other than ''victims'' at male hands. I have since come to learn that nothing can be further from the truth! All of us, men and women, have some culpability, and we need to answer for our own actions and take responsibility for them, NOT ''making excuses'' for them or ''passing the blame'' onto the laps of one group or the other. If feminism (TRUE feminism) is to succeed, it needs to return to it's roots: ''EQUALITY'' for all, regardless of sexual assignment at birth ... NOT ''one-upmanship!''
Mahalo for your time and consideration.
~ For more insight into the issues of domestic violence against men, please visit the ''MENWEB'' site at...
~ For information and updated news stories related to Men's Issues in general (particularly ''Father's Rights'' initiatives), please visit the ''Men'sNewsDaily'' website at...
They followed up with another program in response to this email in an attempt to give ''equal time'' to the other point of view. Everything seemed to be going fairly and objectively until some woman from a local domestic violence hotline service called into the program throwing around some severely skewed figures based upon faulty research, to which I also just had to respond. What follows is my email reply to that incident which I just sent about a half-hour ago.
Hello again, NR Ladies ~
Unfortunately (and I really do wish that I did not have to do this), I have to clear up a wealth of MISINFORMATION that was allowed to be expressed by one of the callers to your program.
The caller who identified herself as a DV 'Hotline' counselor (perhaps unintentionally or unknowingly) presented some considerably dishonest figures about the rates of Domestic Violence between males and females.
She first showed the bias behind these figures she was quoting from when she revealed that the severely one-sided numbers she was rattling off were 'based upon a ''WORLDWIDE'' study,' which especially included what she called 'PEASANT communities.'
The fact that MEN were overwhelmingly identified as the major culprit in such a study is no great surprise to anybody-- not even me --because women in ''UNDER-developed'' nations typically ARE oppressed and often mistreated with few or no rights and with little or no recourse. That's just a given fact!
When I was presenting the 'male victims of domestic violence' figures I had submitted, it was with the assumption that the statistics were reflective of such incidences within the United States and other so-called ''DEVELOPED'' (western) nations... where we are supposedly much more 'enlightened' and where we strive for 'fairness & equality,' especially between the sexes. So when (or if) such a ''worldwide'' study is included with these other figures from the western world, of course you are going to see such a drastically lopsided final result.
The other area where your caller (knowingly or unknowingly) spread more misinformation about the frighteningly high rates of ''domestic violence'' against women was when she admittedly revealed that the research she was quoting from included such things as 'yelling at' or 'belittling' as forms of domestic violence.
But think about this honestly: Considering the rates at which MEN are 'verbally abused' or threatened by their female partners, one would again see a shift in the numbers ... but, remarkably, men on the receiving end of 'verbal assaults' (yelling, screaming, threatening, belittling, etc.) from their female partners typically do not equate such outbursts as ''domestic violence'' in their own cases (...part of that ''sticks & stones'' mentality that men have).
This would also help to explain why men generally do not exhibit signs of ''fear'' when engaged in an argument with his female partner, as your caller pointed out. In fact, even WHILE being beaten, men will typically not produce physiological signs of being afraid, based in part on the 'be tough & deal with it' mentality men are sociologically conditioned to respond with, but also based on the conditioning western men receive from society that your male guest admitted to on-air, namely, that men are NEVER right to hit a woman for ANY reason ... even if it is in self-defense. (Ever watched Jerry Springer?)
And speaking of the ''self-defense'' argument, again the numbers quoted to you by the 'hotline' worker are skewed.
Admittedly, as your caller pointed out, many such studies often do not include this important specific detail when they ask their series of questions, which would indeed be a greatly welcomed addition when conducting their surveys. However, this excuse for ''female-on-male'' family violence, despite sounding good on its surface, does NOT explain the instances of UNILATERAL (one-sided) violence committed by women. The ''Conflict Tactics Scale'' show almost a 50/50 incidence rate for unilateral physical violence in domestic situations -- at a rate of roughly 25% for both male and female perpetrators.
(An interesting side note is that this is also roughly the same rate-- between 20-25% --for women who murder their husbands or live-in boyfriends in actual cases of self-defense ... which raises the interesting, important, and most logical question: ''Why do the remaining [75%] murder their male partners?'').
The CTS study also shows that slightly more women admit to being the first to strike their partners. Most studies also show that women typically hit over manini stuff, such as, ''I was trying to get his attention,'' ''He was being insensitive to my needs,'' etc.
And on the ''emergency room admission rates'' of women suffering injury as a result of domestic violence (the MOST SERIOUS piece of misinformation shared by your caller), consider these figures from a recent study conducted jointly by the ''NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE'' and the ''CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL'' (the ''NIJ/CDC National Violence Against Women'' survey, which, according to their study, estimates that 1.5 million women and 835,000 men are the victims of domestic violence each year) --
Fact:
And, finally, regarding the excuse that more children are abused, neglected or killed by mothers because mothers spend more time with the keiki -- again, this sounds very good on its surface, until one compares the rates with ''single'' or ''custodial FATHER'' households. Considering the ''violent male'' belief we've all been conditioned with at one time or another, we should expect to see comparable or greater rates of child neglect/abuse/murder in such households. Surprisingly, however, these rates are LOWEST among ''father only'' households (...and where ''fathers'' do factor in such horrendous violations against children they are most often ''STEPFATHERS'' or the live-in boyfriends of the mothers).
Why such big differences in the numbers? Are the feminists with an anti-male agenda just making stuff up to support their causes? Apparently so, in some cases. For example, in May of last year, Tina Oakland, the director of the ''UCLA Center for Women and Men,'' responding to a full page ad placed in the campus newspaper (''The Daily Bruin'' - April 18, 2001) by the ''Independent Women's Forum,'' attempted to debunk one of the IWF claims made in the ad by presenting figures she claimed she had acquired from FBI and AMA studies. When it was revealed that the figures she presented were neither confirmed nor found at either of those two sites, Ms. Oakland's response to a ''National Review'' interviewer was:
> "The statistics don't really matter that much in the big picture. We're just trying to focus on the real issue here, to debate about civil rights, not bicker about numbers."
Such dishonest and disingenuous individuals and so-called 'feminist' organizations will also try to convince everyone who will listen to them that any information that does not reflect support for their agenda is all part of some sort of organized ''woman-bashing'' biased male diatribe. If that's true, then that would raise some very interesting questions, indeed, when considering some of the prominent names who conduct and verify much of this research in 'male-victim' domestic violence. Included in this list are:
* Erin Pizzey ~
* Cathy Young ~
* Sheridan Hill ~
* Bunny Sewell ~
* Trudy Schuett ~
* Wendy McElroy ~
* Melanie Phillips ~
* Dianna Thompson ~
* Suzanne Steinmetz ~
* Christina Hoff Sommers ~
I've already oversaturated you ladies with information overload, and I really do appreciate your patience and time spent in reading this email. Hopefully, we can reach a point of consensus where both men and women can move away from all of this 'point/counterpoint' antagonism and come together to work on our mutual problems not only for the benefit of both sexes, but ESPECIALLY for the benefit and ''Best Interest'' of our CHILDREN, who are often the innocent victims that get caught in the middle. ("Ho'omalu na Keiki!")
Aloha & Mahalo Nui Loa! ~
15:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
I sent the following email to the hosts of a fairly new local radio show called ''Naked Radio'': ''A Program For Chicks, By Chicks'' (their words, not mine).
* September 2, 2002 *
Aloha, Ladies ~
Ahui Hou ~
Adrian
* September 20, 2002 *
First, allow me to express my sincere gratitude for your decision to cover the 'other side of domestic violence' topic on your program Wednesday night (Sept. 18, 2002).
> ''Only 1.85% of women's emergency room visits are due to domestic violence — all forms of violence account for only 5% of ER visits. 647,396 women visit emergency rooms (5%) for any assault. 923,336 (7%) go because of animal bites/stings, 2,386,488 (18%) for transportation accidents, 1,461,168 (11%) for overexertion.''
(founder of battered women's shelters)
(author and vice-president of the ''Women's Freedom Network'')
(freelance writer, copywriter and editor)
(couples counselor)
(author and publisher of the ''DesertLight Journal'' e-zine)
(writer and editor)
(journalist, author and social commentator)
(founding director of the ''American Coalition for Fathers and Children'' and editor of "Fathers & Families" magazine)
(sociologist, therapist, researcher and co-investigator in the ''First National Family Violence Survey'')
(author, researcher, associate professor)
Adrian
September 24, 2002 (Tuesday)
Went to my second worksite this morning a bit hesitant about confronting the ''Governor'' (see July 18 entry) since our state primary elections were held Saturday. Despite all of his big, excited & positive talk about the ''effective'' exposure he was getting as a result of his cheaply made signs, despite all of the favorable connections he claimed to be making in his 'house-to-house' campaign, despite his belief that the ''independent'' guidelines he established for himself were all going to work in his favor, despite his attempts to convince how he would receive the nomination almost by default because the top three Democratic contenders for the governor's race... former Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono, Ed Case (cousin of AOL/Time/Warner chairman and AOL founder, Steve Case) and former Republican legislator Dominus G. ''Andy'' Anderson ...would severely and evenly split their vote between themselves, and despite my trying to bring him to reality that politics is little more than a ''popularity contest'' that requires visually appealing advertising & LOTS of media exposure (which he adamantly avoided), when the final results were tallied Saturday night / Sunday morning, he didn't even come in fourth -- he came in fifth (of six candidates). In fact, Kaui Hill (a.k.a. ''Bu La'ia,'' a second-rate local ''comedian'') running on the obscure ''Natural Law'' Party, managed to garner more votes than he had received (587 vs. 568). In fact, very close to four times as many people did not cast a vote for governor on the Democratic ticket (2731).
This is not to say that Reyes didn't have a decent campaign platform -- fact is, he did; He just went about promoting it the wrong way.
Anyway, I did not have to worry about having to uncomfortably confront him, because (perhaps trying to recuperate from such a stunning defeat) he spent most of the time hiding away in one of the corners of his worksite, sleeping.
Anyway, as a result of the vote count, it looks as if Hawaii is going to make history by becoming the second state where the two top contenders for the governorship are both women (''Demoncrat'' Mazie Hirono and ''Repugnantcan'' Linda Lingle) and is thereby guaranteed to have a woman as its governor (...the other ''third party'' and ''independent'' candidates don't rate). I've coined this historical political showdown myself as the ''Catfight Governor's Race!'' And I don't mean that derogatorily ... ALREADY they're hissing and getting nasty at each other. It's going to be fun!
16:30, Hawaii Standard Time.
September 27, 2002 (Friday)
Was very dead tired by the end of my first workshift, I was barely even able to steer the motorcycle I was so out of it. It didn't start waning until Ike (the other security guard on the nights when ''Governor Reyes'' is not working) had me venting over this illegal fascists regime which stole representative ... the rushes of anger and frustration over the everyone's apathy, complacency and silence did something to rapidly relieve me of my mysterious syndrome.
Went to ''Art House Cinema'' at Restaurant Row this morning to finally see the Inuit language film, ''Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner'' while it was still showing in town. It was interesting to see the new look to the old ''Wallace Restaurant Row 9 Theatres'' where I worked as a projectionist in the first few months of its establishment back in the Spring of 1995, not too long after my arrival in the Islands.
Afterwards, I decided to try my first ''Papa John's'' pizza ... and let me say that I was considerably LESS than impressed -- their crusts (both thin and regular) were awesome, but their so-called ''better ingredients'' could have used a heck of a lot of improvement, especially their sauce. And that sorry-assed ''special spice'' packet they include only improved the flavor slightly. (And this is the pizza that automatically costs you over $20 as soon as you put more than one topping on the thing, and no ''specialty pizza'' variety? Thanks, but no thanks ... I'll stick with Domino's for my occasional fix.)~
22:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
September 28, 2002 (Saturday)
Invited Ping (my next door neighbor makai) into the apartment very early this morning (just a few minutes before Midnight), asking for her assistance in translating & transliterating the Chinese language (Mandarin) titles on my respective DVDs. I was so hot in the room with no breeze blowing whatsoever that I literally had to strip down in her presence, although covering up with the bedsheet.
After her help, I spent hours throughout different parts of the day trying to figure out why my ''DVD Movies'' portion of my webpage was either not loading or having great difficulty loading. I still have not quite figured it all out yet. (And here I thought this whole ''webpage migration / re-establishment'' thing was only going to be a week or two's worth of work at the longest. I am just so close to just giving up on this whole webpage building idea altogether.)
I had the ''pleasant'' surprise (if it can be called that) of learning that ''Papa John's seems to be the only pizza which actually improves in flavor as cold left-overs ... but that thin crust I was so impressed with when it was served fresh out of the oven turned soggy. Another vote for ''Domino's, I'd say.
Inspired by Ping's room, I also finally decided to place the mattresses out on the bedroom floor tatami-style ... something I had planned on doing for a long time anyway.
23:35, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 2, 2002 (Wednesday)
Finally decided to saunter up to the ''Governor'' at work this morning. He still believes that he ran an effective campaign, and as an explanation for the major ass-whoopin' he took at the polls he's claiming vote fraud ... due primarily to ''redistricting'' which left large parts of the population disenfranchised -- particularly the Filipino communities and ''multiple job holders.''
Undaunted, and not at all dejected, he is now filing the necessary paperwork in an attempt to fill out the remainder of U.S. Representative Patsy Mink's term, who was re-nominated on the Democratic ticket to represent Hawaii's ''Second District'' in the primary election while she lay unconscious in the hospital of viral pneumonia and who died Saturday.
16:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 6, 2002 (Sunday)
I've been working overtime putting this website together over the course of the entire weekend, so much so that I really had neither time nor energy to make a journal entry for the events of Friday Morning until now!
14:05, Hawaii Standard Time.
(Early that morning I had decided to forego sleep and take a trip out to Kualoa, near Mokoli'i Island-- b.k.a. ''Chinaman's Hat'' --less as an excuse to get out of the city for some quiet & serene down-time and more as an effort to recharge my motorcycle battery after I'd ran her out of fuel earlier in the week.
I had originally planned on visiting the shrimp truck there at the botanical garden & nursery [an over-priced tourist trap], but bypassed it the first time, so I turned into the beach park area and relaxed there for a while, wading & chasing sand crabs and the like.
Upon leaving I decided to render unusable several hypodermics I had found near the roadside, and wouldn't you know I jabbed my finger with one of them, but since apparently none of them had been used for anything I did not worry about it.
The meal at the shrimp truck was a better bargain-- and better tasting --than ''Giovanni's'' further along the north shore, but it was also somewhat plainer, the swarms of flies almost brought out the ''nigger'' in me, and the shrimps themselves tasted somewhat odd.
Since returning from the trip, I have been between working overtime on these webpages until I just couldn't take it anymore or until sleep depravation would just finally catch up with me. And I'm STILL only about half-done!)
October 7, 2002 (Monday)
I couldn't find any record of my ''Feminist Agenda'' companion page to the ''Tropical Storm: Yellow'' page, so I'm going to have start over with an entirely new one.
My ''Rosetta Stone'' Japanese Language Course (level one), which I'd ordered from Amazon.com about a week and a half ago, arrived today. It'll require me to do a significant amount of loading onto my computer hard drive ... which almost always guarantees disastrous results.
I also found out from today's news headlines that Ed Case has thrown his name into the hat for Patsy Mink's congressional seat, and Colleen Hanabusa (Nanakuli/Waianae/Makaha) is also considering the seat as well. At a time like this, I would insist to ''Governor Reyes'' that he just cut his losses and withdraw from seeking the office altogether ... but I know it would be wasted breath.
9:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 10, 2002 (Thursday)
I have never actually been (quote/unquote) ''proud'' to be an ''American'' ... but upon hearing tonight's congressional vote results, I can now say without any reservation whatsoever that I have officially become ashamed to be an American! (I figure it won't be too much longer before those little ''Purple Triangles'' are once again back in fashion.)
23:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 14, 2002 (Monday)
I just got back upstairs from taking out the trash and discovered that I had left my pedalcycle completely unlocked and that it had been sitting there as such, undisturbed, for the entire weekend, since pre-dawn Thursday morning.
16:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 16, 2002 (Wednesday)
Just as I was returning from work early this morning, pushing the motorcycle onto the property, Boo Yah, one of the ''neighbors'' in the apartment complex, was chasing after her ''girlfriend,'' with whom she had gotten into a ''lover's spat'' (...turns out that Boo has been experimenting with lesbianism for the past couple of months). It would have been nothing to take notice of, except that she was chasing after her in a nightgown and barefeet and had run after her for several streetblocks.
After a short while of joking with the security guard about it I decided to go off looking for her/them and suggested to the security guard that she check Boo Yah's door to make sure it was closed and/or that she had not locked herself out, considering that all Boo left out of the complex with was the nightgown covering her. When I caught up with them they were just in the process of going their separate ways. I assured Boo that her apartment was being looked after and escorted her back so I could unlock the main doors for her.
She invited me upstairs when we got back; I accepted to see how she lived and to socialize for a little bit. (Her apartment was almost as cluttered as Susie's.) Boo Yah is kind of like myself in that she can do her business in the bathrooom and walk out of the shower in the presence of someone else and not at all feel self-conscious or embarrassed about it.
I stayed with her until almost 6:00, doing nothing but talking story and playing a video game. I also noticed that of all of her movie videos, we only shared one in common: ''Scream.''
During my time there, however, I learned the sad reality that Boo Yah not only has an alcohol problem (which I already knew about), but also smokes ''Ice'' (crystal methamphetamine).
11:35, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 18, 2002 (Friday)
Went to K[issMyAss]mart right after returning from work, intending to return the defective wristwatch I purchased a couple of weeks ago and purchasing some makeshift curtains for the main door and for separating off the kitchen section from the main room. At first I bought a cheap bedsheet that I tried to use to cover the doorway, but the dimensions were much too far off and the material wasn't light enough to suit me, so I went back to make a return and spend the extra money for a real curtain instead.
I put up all of the curtains and cleaned up a bit before heading over to Boo Yah's to repair her flat bicycle tire as I promised. She had a cousin of hers (named ''Sweetie'') visiting her at the time. I had to endure another display of Boo Yah's Ice smoking before she went into the shower and was ready to leave.
When I finished ''repairing'' and replacing the tire (which did not have any punctures that needed repairing at all until my own attempt to remove the inner tube punctured it) I came back to watch a DVD I had borrowed from her ... a DVD-R of ''Queen of the Damned'' (a stoooopid! movie, which makes it a shame that Aaliyah could not have gotten in at least one more acting credit with a different film to make up for this one before she died). At closer and longer inspection I found three more titles that Boo shares with me (''Tales From The Hood'' and the two ''Blair Witch'' movies), but all of her stuff, except for three DVDs, are in VHS format, which doesn't help me out at all if I want to borrow something.
20:20, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 22, 2002 (Tuesday)
On the way back from work this morning, intent on buying a pint of milk and a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, I was instead enticed to take advantage of the special offer of purchasing a DVD movie and receiving with it a free box of cereal (...or was that the other way around?) -- and since cereal was already on the menu this morning, the Dew got sacrificed, since I had only come to the store with five dollars. The DVD I chose (out of the four available, which were all a part of an AOL marketing promotion) was ''The Muppets Take Manhattan'' ... which was actually a cute little movie -- but now I've got to find a way to make space for its inclusion.
I just sent Karen another sneak preview of one of the ''Tropical Storm: Special'' pages -- the first one to have been ''completely completed'' in every way except in its URL, which will be changed when everything is up for scrutiny.
To tell the truth, I'm almost inches away from trashing this whole ''website/homepage'' idea altogether, it's just getting to me that much! What got me to this point was Friday night. After I went to return her stuff to Boo Yah around 23:00 (as she was attempting to scam her way out of paying her cab fare) I came back upstairs to work some more on the ''Movies Listing'' page I had been having trouble with (the same one I just sent to Karen), and went through hell for over the next three hours trying to determine why the HTML was appearing correct in the text but refusing to translate in the web browser window. By the time I figured out where the errors lie, I just shut myself down in frustration and hardly bothered with anything on the machine for the remainder of the weekend, except for burning my synapses with several DVD presentations.
15:35, Hawaii Standard Time.
October 31, 2002 (Thursday)
I just sent the word out about ten minutes ago that the homepage is FINALLY all pau, and is posted and open for review, criticism or attack.
I've been on it non-stop ever since walking back in the door around 4 o'clock this morning, and now I'm stinking tired and I just want to get some rest before going back to work in a couple of hours. (No Boddah Time!)
14:35, Hawaii Standard Time.
November 1, 2002 (Friday)
It disturbs me that I have to start the first ''official'' entry to the ''new'' webpage journal on a note of very bad news....
Upon arriving to my second jobsite early this morning, I noticed a crime scene being dismantled on the grounds of Sam Sung Plaza, the next down. I learned from Isaac (''Ike''), the Wednesday & Thursday night ''in-house'' security officer there, that a young Japanese woman, tourist, on her way back from Ross Dress for Less, the next shop mauka of Sam Sung, was viciously attacked with a knife by some cock sucking ''local boy'' in a purse snatching attempt. From what I was told, that heartless bastard cut the poor girl in several different places-- including damned near cutting her hand off literally --and then had the audacity to punch after the fact! Thankfully, they captured that turd sucker in very quick order!
I just came back from the Chinatown branch police station myself about an hour ago, where I went in to turn in a couple of ladies' handbags I found at my own worksite this morning which may or may not be connected with the case (...even though both bags were completely empty upon discovery, I still did not trust leaving them with anybody else, since they were obviously pricy items -- a ''Liz Clairborne'' mini shoulder pack and a ''Sarné'' handbag designed like one of those ''Louis Vuitton'' bags: things that no on would just throw away unless they had absolutely no idea what they had in their possession).
23:30, Hawaii Standard Time.
November 4, 2002 (Tuesday)
I have no idea who's going to win this (surprisingly) tight race for Hawaii Governor, but after hearing that the rest of the country has effectively handed our fate back over to the heartless, war mongering, nouveau-Fascists (i.e., the Conservatives / Right Wing / Republican Party)-- so that they have once again (even AFTER all of this shit that they just got finished putting this country through in just the TWO YEARS of ''Baby Doc'' Bush's ''residency''...) --handed these Constitution subverting dictatorial wannabees control over ALL THREE BRANCHES of Federal Government makes whatever happens now in Hawaii's races a totally moot issue! (Even though, by all indications, it looks like-- as I had been trying to tell everyone for the longest time --that Republican Linda Lingle is going to come out on top of this one ... and I sooooo wanted to hear Honolulu Weekly's resident ''liberal-bashing'' editorial cartoonist, John Pritchett, pissing all over himself if the race turned the other way in favor of Mazie Hirono.
23:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
November 13, 2002 (Wednesday)
''The Governor'' (Reyes), who's now running in the special election to fill US Rep. Patsy Mink's vacant congressional seat, revealed to me this morning his total ignorance in the world of politics.
Since learning of the election results and sharing them with him a couple of hours after the final tally was recorded, I reminded him of the fact that I was ''3-for-3'' regarding our debates and analyses of what the ''primary'' and ''general'' election results were going to be (...the first beinging that he would NOT receive the Democratic Party nomination in the Primary, no matter HOW the votes got split between the three front-runners -- Ed Case, Dominus G. ''Andy'' Anderson, and the eventual nominee Mazie Hirono); second, that Linda Lingle was going to walk all over her only Republican challenger in the Primary, John Carroll; and third, that the Lingle/Aiona ticket would take the [newly constructed] Governor's mansion), and I tried to use this as an incentive for him to drop out of this pie-in-the-sky delusion he's chasing after, especially since Ed Case (who nearly beat the panties off Mazie in the Primary) has put his name into the hat!
His response to the Primary results then was that it was all based on fraud (not voter apathy) ... although he finally did admit to what I had been trying to tell him for the longest time during his campaign -- that by avoiding invitations to ''support'' rallies and similar invitations by key Democratic party figures would work against him by not giving him any of the much needed exposure.
But now he has also come up with the answer as to why Lingle beat out Mazie Hirono for the governorship ... MORE FRAUD! Despite the fact that almost from the very beginning of the campaign I gave him every reason I could think of as to why Lingle was going to walk away with the prize (and the reasons were quite numerous), he still refused to face reality. But now, I'm beginning to suspect that he has perhaps lost touch with reality altogether, rather than just simply refusing to face it, because now, in this latest cry of fraud, he is claiming that there is no way possible that communities which voted heavily Democratic for state and city seats in this latest General election could have also voted heavily in favor of Linda Lingle. He's claiming that this proves a case of fraud because it is [quote] against the law [unquote] for voters to ''cross-party vote'' in the ''General'' election as well as in the ''Primary'' (never mind how much I try to explain to him that it was DEMOCRATS who were responsible for putting Reagan in office ... TWICE!) I asked him repeatedly to pull up the ''law'' in question and present it to me ... he refuses; I ask him to just give me ''chapter & verse'' and I will look up the information myself ... he refuses.
And THIS is the man who wants everyone to take his runs for political office seriously????
05:25, Hawaii Standard Time.
November 19, 2002 (Tuesday)
Well, last night's / this morning's Leonid Meteor Shower-- which was supposed to be "the most grandest display we've ever seen and won't ever see again for the next ten-thousand years" or some such hype --proved to be yet another major flop! I am sick of all of these astronomer types ''crying 'wolf''' about the grandeur of all of these anticipated celestial events: the most spectacular meteor displays ever! ... comets whose tails can be expected to fill up to one-quarter of the sky! ... or some other such hype. I'm just tired of it ... tired of all of the disappointments and let-downs. From here on out, I just do skygazing on my own, without any prompting from anyone, and see whatever I see at that time.
15:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
November 25, 2002 (Monday)
Just got done restructuring my iMac's ''desktop themes'' -- for the 2nd time in a row! The first attempt kept glitching on me no sooner than I had gotten to the last theme I designed for the desktop welcoming screen -- all of which kept me past midnight, of course!
I began working on it last night around 21:00 or so, after having returned from Home Depot, where I went to get reimbursed for the extra latching mechanism I purchased Saturday night, when I decided to change the locks on my door [more for aesthetic reasons than anything] -- It turned out that the 'combo pagckage' [knob plus deadbolt] had contained the mechanism ... it was just hidden away to where no one could see it without opening the package.
* Update - (12:30):
03:15, Hawaii Standard Time.
Shaved off the goatee I had grown over the past three weeks (despite being against work regulations), but I kept the moustache (and that probably will not last much longer). Afterwards, I went to the office to pick up two more paychecks from the last two pay periods, which now makes a total of FOUR paychecks from the past four pay periods I am now sitting on uncashed.
I was also to find out that the ''desktop theme'' feature on this computer is still harrassing me over this one particular theme I try to include -- it has ALWAYS singled out this theme in particular to frustrate me, no matter what I do or how I try to tweak it. I'm telling you, there's only so much of this sort of thing I can take before I simply just opt out for a ''WINDOWS'' machine.
November 30, 2002 (Saturday)
I finally gave in and purchased one of the new flat screen iMacs yesterday afternoon at one of the local ''Mac exclusive'' independent retailers, and have been trying to get accustomed to it since taking it out of the box and working away at it all the way up to this morning.
I can say without any reservations that I hate that new operating system, version ''X.'' Granted, it looks nice, but so far it's a pain to use -- not only is it slower than the freezing sun (despite being loaded with over 500 Megs of RAM and a famed 700 MHz G4 processor), but it is also impractical in many ways, and it actually seems to take more away than it actually gives in return. It seems as if it were all another example of ''Gee, Mom... Look What We Can Do!'' overkill, though it's supposedly a more stable platform than ''9-point-whatever.'' After coming to the realization that the new OS was going to be more hassle and heartache than what I was willing to put myself through, I began reconfiguring it so that it runs OS 9 as my default operating system. I'll have to buy a firewire cable in order to transfer my existing files over from the ''Jade Vampire.''
Although there is one thing I've come to like about the new OS -- The DVD player in OS X does an excellent job of playing the few DVDs in my collection which have spots in the discs that behave in a faulty, haphazard fashion ... the new version player just breezes right through them.
Most of the good things I have to say, however, are actually about the unit itself. I especially love the clarity and sharpness of the visual images (although these do tend to get distorted when viewing the panel from a variety of angles), the large loud speakers, and the retractable CD ROM tray (no more of that ''slot loading'' bollocks!).
I'm probably still going to end up wishing that I had saved half the money I spent on this thing and just waited in line at Wal-Mart after work yesterday morning to purchase one of those $700 Hewlett Packard combo sets. We'll know soon enough.
12:20, Hawaii Standard Time.
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