Boating & Evicting

Today we hopped on one of the long boats (So called because it’s… well, long, and has a tiny propellor attached to an impressively long rod that stretches way out beyond the aft side of the boat) to check out the near by cove of Railey. While we were there we ran into a charmingly stereotypical British girl by the name of Sally and ended up having coffee with her and just yakking about this, that and the other thing, pretty much in that order.

We also got some bad news in that once again, we are kicked out of our apartment, and for exactly the same reason as the last time, it seems; the owner has sold the place.

This is making some excellent in-roads in our mutual attitudes towards owning property versus renting it. The arbitrary nature of us just getting kicked out this particular time seems like a rather sadistic whim, since this means we rented this apartment so that we could divest ourselves of furniture for an imminent move to Canada that will take place as soon as The Wife’s Permanent Residency application has been approved. Now, with only a few months to go, likely, we find ourselves having to spend MORE money to move, and possibly buy furniture anyway, just so we have something to sleep on for the next few months.

Oh well, it’s been a while since something bad happened, so I guess this is just the mandatory complication that needs to run riot once in a while.

Touring

One of the first things to greet me upon waking today was an intense itching in my reddened arms and legs that made me want to gnaw my own limbs off. Whee, I think it’s sunburn.

Today was mostly spent with a hired driver who took us to a few places around Krabi. We saw Yet Another Gorgeous Beach, a tropical forest walkthrough where people were splashing around in a remarkably blue river, a small Buddhist temple (where I got chased by dogs), a big rock shelf which had been proclaimed in signs as “Gastropod Fossil” and in reality turned out to be a stony snail’s graveyard of sorts.

Other than that, a bit more lounging by the pool and some walking around trying out the different restaurants. So far Thai (Duh…), Swedish and Italian have been sampled…

Lounging

The actual first day–and the actual date of the first year anniversary for The Wife and I–was spent not doing much of anything except lounging by the pool where I foolishly applied sunblock only to my shoulders and back, neglecting my arms and legs. If you think “He’s going to pay for that later” you’d be right, but that’s for tomorrow’s entry. This entry is about sitting by a pool in a sunny, tropical cove with blue, blue ocean water and Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys as reading material.

Being an aspiring novelist who worships Neil-O, I immediately was overcome with a terrific inferiority complex and a deep, abiding feeling of “Why bother,” but at the same time, the need to tell stories burns as brightly as ever.

It’s just incredibly humbled right now.

Arrival

Had I been writing faithfully every day since we’d arrived in Thailand, this would have been the day we got here. It was an afternoon arrival, almost within a few minutes of when we left, since Thailand is only one hour behind . The room was great, the power outage that occurred sometime in the evening was not, nor was calling for room service, only to be told three hours later that room service meals weren’t possible, despite the fact that we’d been faithfully waiting the entire time for the food to arrive. But, much like Nintendo, whatever flaws the Thais and their hotels have is easily forgiven, whereas were this any other country (and any other console, like, say, Sony) even the smallest flaw would bring the wrath of God and no mercy.

So 365 Days Later

Wow, has it already been a year since my friend Aerin showed up for the Wedding I Never Thought Would Ever Happen In A Million-Buzillion Years But Somehow Did? At the time we were living in another apartment (still in the same general neighborhood) and the Wife was still working a job in an office that was slowly bleeding away her will to live. Now I’m the one that’s going to an office (that’s slowly bleeding away my will to do Real Work; come on getting paid to play and write about games is a juicy job) and she’s happily–if somewhat busily–drawing the hell out of herself with all kinds of jobs, including children’s books, kid’s comics, and maybe, if the fates smile upon us, our own collaborative comic book, if Slave Labor Graphics actually likes it.

The day after tomorrow will be our first wedding anniversary, though in actuality it will have been our fourth year together. Being diabolical and lazy, I actually staggered out key critical moments in the relation so they all fell on the same day, that way I’d never have to keep track of any dates. the day we became a couple, the day I proposed and the day we got married all fall on October 19th, so I’m totally covered on “YOU NEVER REMEMBER THE MOST IMPORTANT DATES OF OUR LIVES!” front. Then again, I’m safe anyway, because she never remembers the dates…

There may or may not be posts over the next few days depending on the mood. We’ll be flying off to Krabi in Thailand, which is one of those places with water so ridiculously blue and beaches so ridiculously tropical that they look like something out of a Leonardo DeCaprio movie, and, in fact, are.

It’s been a good year. Then again, the previous three before it were also good, so I’m going to be incredibly boring and pedestrian and say that, at least in this case, getting married has definitely made me a lot happier than being a bitter, angst-ridden, hateful cynic that carried an irrational hatred for anyone that was happily attached, but that’s ’cause I was jealous as hell.

Now I don’t give a damn, ’cause I gots my girl, I gots my writin’, I gots my cats, and I gots my gamin’. And my priorities go pretty much in that order, unless you count Guitar Hero, then that might come before writin’…

My Incredibly Helpful Solution

Recently it has come to my attention that sometimes people suffer from a certain discomfort in public when they see a vagrant, hobo or other Person Of Transient Address wandering the street mumbling to themselves. The general public finds this sort of behavior odd and disturbing. They find it perverse that someone would simply walk in any particular direction, staring blankly, not really seeing the world around them while they babble incoherently about something that makes sense only to them and whatever imaginary companion accompanies them.

I suddenly realized what the perfect solution to this is.

Give them cellular phone headsets.

For whatever reason, when we see someone walking down the street displaying THE EXACT SAME BEHAVIOR, but we see the earpiece and wire dangling towards some pocket–presumably where the phone is–this is suddenly Perfectly Okay, and we keep on walking, our confidence that all is right with the world still intact.

Witness the world of difference:

Bum With No Headset:

Bum: Bastards! All of them bastards! I told them, but they wouldn’t listen, and look what’s happened! There’s going to be hell to pay, I warned them, I did, but no one ever listens…

Pathetic, isn’t it? Now witness Guy In Business Suit Angrily Striding Down Street With Cellular Phone And Headest

Executive: Bastards! All of them bastards! I told them, but they wouldn’t listen, and look what’s happened! There’s going to be hell to pay, I warned them, I did, but no one ever listens…

See? Suddenly, the man is important! Is making a contribution, is Doing Something Respectable.

Now, we try it with the Bum. This is the Bum With Cellular Headset:

BWCH: Bastards! All of them bastards! I told them, but they wouldn’t listen, and look what’s happened! There’s going to be hell to pay, I warned them, I did, but no one ever listens…

Our poor homeless twit now walks the streets with the air of legitimacy and raw sardines. As long as he’s talking into a mouthpiece and not the air, he’s just another productive member of society speaking out loud to no one in particular, but now he’s doing it with PLASTIC, and that makes all the difference…

Maaaaaan…

Four scripts in four days. I never want to do that again.

Back to gaming, and hopefully a far more irrresponsible lifestyle for the rest of the week. Oh wait, there’s still all those reviews that need writing for GameAxis. Crap.

Thank God there’s a vacation coming up…

Writing, Gaming But Mostly Writing

A surprising amount was actually squeezed into today. While the Wife slept, I managed to start on the second last script I need to get out, then hopped into town for a bit to meet up with some old local friends and catch a Woody Allen film, the film in question being Scoop. It’s kind of weird to see Woody Allen going back to “purely” entertaining films like he did earlier in his career, but I think it’s actually working out okay for him. I didn’t think Scoop was exactly Annie Hall, but then you can’t expect an artist to create EVERYTHING at that level.

After that it was time to pick some games I’d been waiting on, as well as the final memory card for the PS2 I think I’ll ever need (I say this because I’m pretty sure that at some point I’ll have a PS3 and then I’ll just transfer everything over to the hard drive and never have to use memory cards again), as well as Capcom’s Godhand–a bizarre and funny brawler by the same guys that made Okami, and Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner which is the latest RPG (though this time with a distinct action bent) from Atlus, the God-hating company that seems to just love destroying or pointing out how evil Christianity is in its games and summarily tasking you with killing God.

Oh well, almost half-way done on that second last script. May as well just suck it up, finish it and then get back to gaming…

Still Writing

So far everything is still busy but under control. Got out the script that I was supposed to, and now I’m concentrating on the Documentary That Wouldn’t Die, on gaming in Singapore. After that, it’s still two more scripts for the travel series out the door by Monday and that’s assuming (which is a bad assumption to make) that no changes will be made for the gaming script over the course of the weekend.

On another note, after making a run for groceries earlier in the day, the Whimsy Of The Wife has now resulted in the acquisition of a movie I never thought I’d own, Hair. It’s the Age of Aquarius, man…

The Bodycount

After the two meetings today (The second of which lasting nearly four hours) the total damage is one script requiring a rearranging of elements by tomorrow morning. The computer documentary script to have a first draft ready by Saturday morning, and two more scripts for the travel show done by Monday morning.

On top of all this, I made the incredibly self-destructive decision to buy this month’s issue of Official Playstation Magazine, since it had a demo of four playable songs from Guitar Hero 2, provided you have the guitar controller required. Motley Crue’s Shout at the Devil, Van Halen’s cover of You Really Got Me, Kiss’s Strutter and Rush’s YYZ in that order. Despite the fact that I should be working to get those scripts out of the way, I’ve already successfully completed all of those songs on expert and am losing on a debate with myself on why I shouldn’t go back and just try to “5 star” them rather than work on those scripts.

Sigh…