Decline and Fall

It can hardly have escaped your attention that network television is completely full of mindless shit. The old axiom that "no-one ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American public" has been proven undeniably to be true. For this reason broadcasters, who are beholden to advertisers, relentlessly bombard us with the kind of festering wank that is guaranteed to appeal to the stupid gullible masses. These are the very idiots that advertisers rely on to peddle their latest cell phone service / air freshener / restless leg medication.

If you happen to be one of the gullible masses you are probably reading this by mistake, and may be having difficulty with some of the longer words. You can fuck off now. How do you know if you are? Well, there are many indicators but a fairly reliable test is to ask yourself if you would willingly watch "Deal Or No Deal" or "Extreme Makeover - Home Edition". If the answer is yes, you are without doubt a moron. I caught the trailer for aforementioned shite gameshow and it seems to me that the basic premise is to get the kind of idiot that you would cross the street to avoid and find a way to give them free money so that they will squeal, jump up and down, and gibber. This will incite the same behavior among the audience in the studio, making for irresistible viewing (apparently) for fellow idiots in their homes watching on TV.

This creates large audiences of stupid people, which advertisers love. There's no market for better quality TV as it attracts people with higher functioning brains, who are not only a smaller audience but far better at discerning the advertisments for the utter bollocks that they are. No point trying to sell to them.

Hollywood operates on pretty much the same principle - lowest common denominator crap which will guarantee a large audience of popcorn-eating, soda-swilling dumbasses. Occasionally a good movie escapes, but as the science of movie-making becomes more refined it's getting less common.

So, for those of you still reading, here are a few movies to buy (don't expect to find many of them in Blockbastards):

1. Withnail and I
2. Get Carter (the original with Michael Caine, not the shit Stallone remake)
3. Snatch
4. Quadrophenia
5. Gangster No.1
6. Sexy Beast
7. Trainspotting
8. Shaun of the Dead
9. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
10.Football Factory

In the meantime I'm off to watch CSI/Law & Order/Cold Case/Without a Trace. I'm not sure which, and I'm not sure it matters.




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Another Fuqing Dinner

I have just returned from China (again) via Hong Kong and JFK. My brain is expected to follow some time tomorrow, so don't be surprised if anything I write today is crap. Or at least more crap than usual.

This was a hard trip - lots of travel, meetings and dinners, and pretty much zero downtime during the week. We did go to karaoke one night - the girls were young and beautiful, and the Johnny Walker Green Label tasted good, but you pay for your sins when the meeting the next day starts at 7am.

Dinners in China are hard work. Sometimes at the end of the day all you want is a burger, but the Chinese dinner is a structured affair, with lots of dishes brought out one at a time. The food is generally good though, even if the occasional dish makes you want to heave (more on that later), and it certainly beats Belgium, where it takes them four hours to serve you four courses with the combined calorific value of a large sneeze.

One night we had a dinner with a large customer in Fuqing city (yes, that's its real name). This which was a fairly formal event, with suits and ties, and a large round table. Each dish was announced individually and appeared on the table in front of the honored guest (in this case the Chairman of the customer company). From there it worked its way round the other guests on the rotating table, with each taking a bit using chopsticks and transfering it either to their plate (in the case of the more expert) or to the table/lap/floor (in the case of the others). The whole exercise was conducted in near silence, mostly because the language barrier rendered conversation pointless, which made the sound of food hitting table, followed by frantic scrabbling with chopsticks to recover it, all the more audible. The fact that only one person could attack each dish at a time meant that an audience consisting of the rest of the assembled guests, was guaranteed to witness any mishaps. Let me just say that anyone who can pick up a giant shrimp, in shell, in sauce, transfer it to their plate and dismember it, all using just chopsticks, and without it flying onto the floor, has my deep respect.

Some dishes were brought out on individual plates, which avoided the process of removing a piece under public gaze, but made it impossible to avoid the more repulsive dishes which might otherwise be passed over. The "piece-de-resistance" in this case was a half-papaya which was adorned with a glutinous white substance. It looked rather as though someone had taken a whole papaya, drilled a hole and had sex with it, and then cut it in half and served it "a la semen", an effect emphasised by the papaya being warm. We were, however, informed that the white stuff was frog ovaries, a special delicacy from North China. I could go my whole life without eating that again - it wasn't the ovaries per se, it was that the texture, combined with warm papaya, was like eating vomit.

You get a lot of weird stuff in China, and you have to get used to it. Bits of animals that you would never think to eat will show up on your plate. For this reason one of my Chinese colleagues made the following observation:

Q. How do you know that Adam and Eve weren't Chinese?
A. They would have eaten the snake.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Home From Home

I’m writing this in the cabin of an American Airlines flight to LA, en route to Hong Kong, because it’s less dull than watching the non-existent movie or browsing the “Crap You Don’t Need” catalogue in the seat pocket in front of me. I’m waiting for my drink to be refilled, but in spite of my having purchased an expensive business class ticket the cabin crew seem to be enforcing a “one soda maximum”.

It’s going to be a long trip – four hours to LA, three hour layover and then thirteen hours to Hong Kong. By the time I arrive it will be Monday morning so I’ll not get to sleep for another day. I’m only hoping that when I do finally get to my room it will be worth the wait. Hotel rooms are often disappointing, the experience frequently bearing no relation to the price paid. I stayed last year at the Mandarin Oriental in New York City, for two nights, at a price that I’m embarrassed to quote but which would truly be called obscene. It’s hard to imagine what services could possibly be provided to justify the price (which was more than double the already ridiculous prices at other Mid-town hotels). However, they asked me to fill out a form with personal information ahead of time, so that they could make the visit special.

The first thing I noticed on entering the room was that the bed had five rows of pillows, bolsters and cushions on it. Completely useless – all men regard anything beyond the basic pillows you will rest your head on as merely an irritation. The shower was good but there was little else to justify the price. However, I received a knock on my door that night and was surprised to receive a trolley bearing champagne, chocolates and a small chocolate cake in honor of my wedding anniversary. Only one problem: Mrs. Bison was not accompanying me, and this made the whole exercise somewhat fucking pointless. Thanks to the current wave of stupid airline restrictions (don’t we feel safer everyone?) I couldn’t even take the champagne home.

I don’t want much from a hotel room, but here are my own personal favorite pains in the arse:

1. I booked a non-smoking room but on arrival they don’t have one: I try to lie down but the pillow stinks like an ashtray. The only thing that will stop me checking out is a complete absence of any other option.
   
2. Some fuckwit in the next room is listening to the TV, talking on the phone or hosting an in room party and I’m trying to sleep. Options include calling the front desk, shouted threats of violence through the wall and/or waking them up at 5am with a phone call when I’m getting up.
   
3. The room has no temperature control. Normally it’s too hot to sleep, but occasionally too cold. The Holiday Inn in Springfield used to be one of the shittest hotels in this regard.
   
4. The sink won’t hold water, making it necessary to constantly mess about with the water flow while I shave.
   
5. The sheets have such a static charge that every time I move around in bed it’s like the 4th of July and when I turn on the light by the bed I’m rewarded with an alarming electrical jolt.
   
6. I’m paying out of my arse for a room in some high-end hotel but high speed internet access is another charge. Are you listening Mandarin Oriental?
   
7. The turndown service. What the hell is it? Am I incapable of finding my way into the bed without someone to start the process for me? Do I really need to be disturbed in order to receive a free micro-chocolate on my pillow??
   
8. Morons on the check-in desk who are incapable of taking a detailed reservation and, on being presented with a credit card, turning it into a room key in one minute. This is not rocket science.
   
9. Alarm clocks that are impossible to set without a degree in electronics and systems engineering. You have to set the alarm in the room – the wake up call from the front desk is organized by the same moron who checked you in, remember?
   
10. Those stupid hangers that you spend five minutes trying to unhook in the closet because they are designed to stop you stealing them, only for you to realize that the one you managed to finally get off is for skirts, not trousers.

I could go on, but this is starting to depress me. My favorite hotel is in Tokyo – the rooms aren’t large but they have everything you need. The staff will do anything for you, and tipping is just not done, so it’s not in expectation of a few dollars. It’s the closest I get to a home from home, but it’s a fucking long way to go to find it.




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Pet Me

The kid next door is going to be getting a dog. I know this because she told me, about eighteen months ago, that it was all agreed with her parents. I am therefore, given continuing absence of any dog, very impressed with said parents' ability to obfuscate, distract and ignore - at this rate she'll be off to college before the dog ever arrives. So she makes do with walking a neighbor's dog, a big black thing that looks like it could decide to eat her at any moment, and which shits the kind of turd that takes two hands to lift into a bag.

The last thing this street needs is another dog. You can hardly pull out of the drive without running down someone with a lead in one hand and a plastic bag of excrement in the other. (Most people pick it up - the exception is a skinny teenage boy two doors away who, I am reliably informed, never picks up the crap; his dog is so irredeemably gay that I'm sure this is part of some desperate struggle to regain a semblance of manhood.)

Every kid wants a dog - the only other option is to fob them off with an alternative pet, something requiring less maintenance, preferably disposable in the case of serious illness (saving on vet bills). The girl next door on the other side just came home with her second guinea pig. She brought the first one round to show it off last year and I couldn't help but notice that it had enormous testicles. I mean, relative to its size, massive, pendulous apendages, hanging like pink baubles behind its albino white body. What can you say? She's a lovely girl, and it was a very friendly guinea pig, but I couldn't help wondering what was going through her dad's mind when he bought it. It's not as though he didn't notice - you couldn't miss them. The new guinea pig is a female, which just serves to bring the testicles on the first into sharper relief. I'm sure it'll be very happy though...

I'm off to China again, although I probably won't eat dog this time. It goes without saying that none of my neighbors would be prepared to consume a relative of their pet. "Dogs are our friends!" Maybe, but I'm sure a cow could get pretty friendly too, if it meant avoiding the butcher. Besides, when was the last time you had to tell a cow to stop humping your leg? If you take it for a walk, though, you're definitely going to need a bigger plastic bag.



Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Pain in the Grass

I know it's Spring because I heard my first ass talking about his lawn today. In the gym I overheard someone telling his buddy of his concerns about crabgrass preventer application, and what would happen if he put it down too soon...and I thought to myself "what happened to you that made this the most exciting thing you have to talk about right now?"

As I may have mentioned before, I refuse to subscribe to the suburban male philosophy that the state of your lawn is a direct reflection of your position in the herd, mating potential and penis size. Having a perfect lawn doesn't mean that you have mastered your environment and should therefore be regarded as an alpha male. In fact it means that you're probably a sad fuck with no hobbies, friends or imagination. This doesn't mean, by the way, that my lawn is a patch of brown dirt, encrusted with dog faeces and liberally adorned with rusted bicycle parts. It just means that, for me, the bar is set at "mostly green, mostly flat, mostly grass, most of the time".

I'm not sure how people become lawn bores. Is in inherited? One of the "values" that parents instill? I'm guessing a lot of guys learned lawn care from their fathers but, let me assure you, that's no excuse. Regardless of the reason, though, it's clear to me that lawn season has arrived and I can look forward to a constant stream of TV commercials touting the benefits of fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides, and festooned with images of happy suburban families, rolling in the grass with the dog and grilling steaks under beautiful blue sky.

What I won't see, obviously, is the miserable bastard with pasty white skin trying vainy to start an eleven year old lawn mower that has received zero maintenance (not even oil) over its sad life. Nor will I see him trampling down mole runs and mowing over dried-out dog turds, or running away from the nest of yellow jackets that he just disturbed. That's the reality of lawn care and it sucks a multitude of arse.

The only thing worse than the lawn commercials, however, is the succession of "seasonal allergy" commercials where near-death sufferers are transformed by a small pill into dog-walkers, gardeners, soccer-game-watchers and backwoodsmen. The message is clear, however: if I want to roll in the lush grass with my perfect family, I'd better take Claritin/Zyrtec/Some Other Shit. Now.




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Dog Penis Soup

I was in Shanghai last week and thought I might try getting a suit made there, since I'd heard they were cheap. My Chinese colleague, Kenny, took two of us to a place where we could get this done. It's hard to describe - a large store with three floors of little booths, mostly dedicated to cheap clothes. A typical booth is about 12ft x 12ft with rolls of fabric on a table and a few sample garments hanging around the sides, with partitions to separate it from the next booth and open to the rest of the store at the front. We arrived late and only one booth was still open; we were quoted the price of RMB 400 (about $50) for a made to measure suit, ready in two days. We figured this would be a good experiment. If an occasion is serious enough to require a suit here's no way I'd ever wear a cheap one - you need to feel good in a suit - but I wanted a new black blazer and some trousers so I thoughts I'd just have them made as a suit. The store owner measured us in about five seconds flat - arm length, waist, leg, back and chest - and we paid about 50% as a deposit.

Two days later we returned, not expecting much. We had to try on the stuff behind a blanket, held up by a smiling chinese girl who made no attempt to pretend she wasn't hoping for a look at our Western manhood! My trousers were OK - a bit loose at the waist but serviceable. The jacket fitted well except that it was tight across the back (I'm not sure the typical client has a lot of muscle to account for). We asked how long to get it fixed: "one hour"! So we wandered around for a bit, buying cheap silk ties (RMB 10 each - just over a dollar) and eventually the jacket returned, very crumpled but now a perfect fit. How they managed to get it done in that time I will never know, especially bearing in mind that it wasn't done on site. But there we are - I was now the proud owner of a suit that I might never wear and had experienced first hand the benefits of buying at source. Time to celebrate! We decided to go for dinner and eat something different...

Kenny took us to a restaurant that served dog, which we ate along with other meats that we cooked on our table in a bowl of boiling water. This was a local restaurant - cheap and basic - which brewed its own beer on site. Jim tried the beer and confirmed that it tasted as though it had passed through the dog on its way to us. Dog isn't a very good meat - they serve it with the skin on and there's lots of fat and gristle, but no hair, so they presumably shave it first! One more thing caught Kenny's eye on the menu - he didn't even want to suggest it at first: Dog Penis Soup.

The world contains two types of people - those who, when confronted with Dog Penis Soup, will try it, and those who won't. Actually there's probably a third type - those who would have a hissy fit and storm out of the restaurant - but they don't count because they have no balls. I have eaten the dog penis and, let me tell you, there's a reason that fellatio isn't really a big thing in the dog world. It's rubbery and kind of tasteless. Thankfully it was chunks, and not a whole dick. I'm not sure even I could have pulled back the skin and eaten that. Apparently it's supposed to make you strong. You know, "strong". Down there.

The rest of the meal passed without further surprise and I returned to my hotel room alone, and never did discover if I would be "stronger" than usual. I suffered no ill effects from the soup, although I had to turn around three times before I got into bed, and I'm still resisting an urge to lick my own balls....




Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Joyful Friday Flight

Let me say that flying out of Hartford airport on a bad-weather Friday evening is right up there with home dental surgery and amateur colonoscopy in the ranks of things best avoided. I should have guessed that things were not going to go well when I returned my rental car, and found a long line of other cars and a complete absence of spotty car return youths to accept them. Apparently the computers were down, which rendered said youths incapable of elementary cerebral function. Nevertheless, having addressed the problem in the time honored way (leaving the keys and walking off with an obsecene comment) the trip to the terminal passed without incident. The lack of any line at security temporarily lifted my spirits but once through the checkpoint I entered the characterless pit which is the American Airlines departure lounge. The pitiful shortage of seats, lack of functioning air conditioning, absence of any decent food (even a burger place, for fuck's sake!) and toilet facilities which would make taking a shit a life-altering event, may not seem to be a major impediment to anyone lucky enough to have a flight leave on time. But get stuck there for two hours and you come to hate the place.

Now don't get me wrong, I've done the 12 hour delays, stuck in overflowing airports, and I'm not looking to compete in a "my experience was worse than yours" contest. Shit, this wasn't even in my top 50 worst travel stories. But I'm going to record it anyway - I'm sure you've read worse stuff.

We boarded late. The plane was a tiny commuter jet, two seats one side, one seat the other, vestigial overhead storage one side only. Plane nerds will no doubt know what it was but I fly assorted aircraft regularly with no interest in who made them. No doubt, if one crashed, the make and model would figure prominently in the subsequent news reports but it's not as if I have much of a choice (oh no - I'd really rather fly a 737-300 - do you have one available?). This plane distinguished itself principally by the overpowering smell of piss which hit you as you walked onboard. Of course I was seated at the back, right next to the toilet, where the smell was so bad you half expected to find urinal cakes in the seat back pocket.

We taxied out to a distant corner of the tarmac, where we sat in the sun, swaeting, until the captain told us that we would be delayed for at leat 90 minutes because of weather. Of course the fuckwits knew that before we left the gate but, and here's the amazing thing, they actually took us back to the gate and let us deplane!! (Isn't that one of the signs of the apocalypse?) Now we were back in the terminal, cooled by a single large portable fan and feasting on chips and candy.

Eventually we reboarded the urine-soaked, cigar-shaped coffin that was our plane and, after waiting for more fuel (sudden realization that we needed more, but only as we were about to leave) we pushed back.

The rest of the trip was dull. My arse went to sleep about an hour from St.Louis, and condensation dripped all over me as we descended, but at least we arrived without making the evening news. Now I'm off to the dry cleaner to see if they can get rid of the urine smell...

Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

The Wooden Chair

Back in the good old days, when I had my first job but no money, my girlfriend and I would go camping for a holiday. This was England, where camping meant a real tent, not a half scale replica of your house, on wheels, with electricity and air conditioning. We'd pitch the tent in a field and pay for the privilege of sharing fly-infested toilets with the kind of people who think a week in a tent, in a field, in the rain, is a really nice idea.

I could regale you with stories from the campsite, like how our tent was so shit it used to fall over in the wind, or how little sleep you get when you put your tent up over flint-filled earth, but the principle feature of our camping trips was the elegant cuisine. We discovered that if you buy a can of chili and a can of potatoes (yes, you can get them ready-cooked in cans) you have a nutritionally insufficient but filling meal for two, requiring the minimum of preparation when you return from the beach, sunburned and too tired to cook much on the tiny little gas stove. This, combined with burger and chips for lunch, not only provided sustenance - it also locked up your bowels in a such a way as to make trips to the foul, pestilent camp toilet unnecessary.

After a few days of this we decided that a break was in order and we repaired to a local restaurant for a luxurious meal for two. Now this was a small town by the sea, and although the restaurant clearly had delusions of grandeur its menu was pretty basic. Instead of fish and chips they had "fried fish with chopped fried potatoes and a side serving of garden peas" or some shite like that, but when it came it was still fish and chips, only without the paper.

The restaurant was full of freshly scrubbed couples and small families, none of them looking, as we did, as though they'd just been trying to milk an unwilling warthog in a wet field. This was obviously a serious dining event for them, which made the whole charade even more ridiculous to us. We sat at a table for two, me with my back to the rest of the diners, on plain wooden chairs. Now with a few days of camping already behind us the chili had started to take hold, and as we ate I developed a persistent urge to fart. I considered holding it for about three seconds but then decided that I would shift a little on my seat and let it slide out gently so no-one would hear. Unfortunately I completely misjudged the angle of my sphincter to the chair seat and managed to emit a rasping sound that left no conceivable doubt as to its origin.

The gentle murmur and clink of family dining ceased abruptly. I continued to eat my leathery fish as my girlfriend was forced to endure the accusing glances of fellow diners. All it needed was a large neon sign reading "it was him" and the scene would have been complete. We paid up and left, and as we walked back to the tent I endured a lecture on how she couldn't believe what I had done, and how embarassing it had been. And no, she wasn't going to see the funny side of it in a few days.

As I sat in the camp toilet at two in the morning, trying desperately to coax my colon into life, watching warily as spiders fell about my head, I pondered the lesson learned from this experience:

Don't go to cheap restaurants with wooden chairs. In a pricey joint you can fart into the seat cushion and no-one will hear.

Copyright 2007 Edward Bison

Toilet Joy

My old friend Charlie used to say that the pleasure of having a really big shit was "almost as good as sex". This may say more about his love life at the time than about the real joy of taking a dump but there's no doubt that it's one of the small pleasures that separates men and women.

For a real man, taking a shit is best accompanied by something good to read. Maxim magazine. Car and Driver. Viz. In fact almost anything is preferable to having to enter the smallest room devoid of any reading material. It's worth noting that I'm referring here to the process of shitting in your own home. Taking a dump in a public toilet, while occasionally unavoidable, is best executed with the minimum residence time and sitting down with a paper attempting to make a day of it is just wrong. People who don't read on the toilet at home, however are either illiterate or women.

In America there must be a particular problem with men hanging around too long in public toilets. There can be no other explanation for why they build toilet cubicles over here with doors you can look over and limbo under, which don't stay shut properly and have two inch gaps either side. Is this the only way to get American men to leave, or is there a fear that, given actual privacy, men might be driven to acts of gross indecency? Detroit Airport, which has about the best bathrooms of any US airport I've seen, has this type of metal door. I was recently engaged in curling one down there when someone entered the cubicle adjacent. The act of them locking their door caused mine to open (outwards, obviously - the only time doors open inwards is when there's no space in the cubicle, causing you to have to climb over your bags in order to get in) and prompted a mad pants-down scramble to get the door back with minimum further loss of dignity.

Anyway, back to home base. It could be that the main attraction of the bathroom to the typical male is that it's fast becoming the only place you can go and expect complete peace while you're there. Think about it - outside the bog you have jobs to do, a spouse who'll look at you as if to say "are you going to watch football all weekend?", telephone calls, bills and all the other crap that life throws up. In the bog you enter a world of suspended animation; the problems stay outside. No decent wife will actually shout through the door to remind you about cutting the grass (here's a hint - if yours does, get the fuck out now). E-mail and phone calls cease to impinge. (Again, if you take the phone into the toilet, go and get some therapy - you're not that important that people want to talk to you while you grow a tail). The toilet is the last bastion of male freedom.

Sooner or later, however, you have to leave. Preferably before you cut off the blood supply and lose the use of your legs. At this point you reach for the bog roll and, interestingly, you really don't care if it's the brand from the TV ads where the cartoon bears shit up against the tree (who the fuck thought that was an appealing idea for a commercial??). You're just grateful that there's some left on the roll, but if you could ask for one thing from your toilet paper, here's the deal: It's not softness. Or quilting. Or extra long rolls. You just want your finger not to go through when you're dealing with a particularly fudgy one. Is that too much to ask?

Copyright 2007 Edward Bison