Lancer Kind

(PARENTAL DISCRETION IS ADVISED! The images contained within may not only give you an appetite for un-culinary creatures on a stick, you may become hungry rather than frightened during the “crunchy” scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark.)

My wife and I, and my good friend Ben went on a trip to China/Taiwan Oct 19-Nov 4, 2008. Ben practically kidnapped us to go along with this wild scheme because he needed witnesses. (Secretly, I think what he really wanted was someone to rush him to the hospital in case his gourmet experienced turned bad.) We started out in Beijing.

I went along with his wild scheme after threats of black mail, plus I could see what I didn’t get right after working on my yet-to-be-published short story, “Katie Fang”, who is a regular at a Beijing Bar and Washiteria.

Shelli and Lancer outside their Bejing hotel. Note Shelli's less enthusiastic smile at the upcoming boys will be boys activities.

Since this occurred post Olympics, we got to see the new shiny dragon-back airport, and Olympic stadiums without dealing with crowds of Westerners. 😉 After all, when one is in China, one should see the natives doing their usuals rather than while they are stressed by Olympic craziness in dealing with bunches of Westerners. Though if that is what you want, then that’s cool too.

Throughout the day, the weather looked hazy. I wasn’t sure if it was from the fog or bad air. It got even worse at night and you could almost see the particulates, like tiny snow, passing by the lights.

Shelli and Ben, bonding in case it's Ben's last day.

We took the subway from the hotel to “long peace street.” Nearby is a walking mall with Cartier watches and all kinds of other high end mall stores. We ate in a restaurant and then went to a nearby night market where Ben’s big feed was to happen.

A tip for those who are going to eat creatures on a stick: don’t walk up to the first stall you see that features squirming creatures, you’ll likely pay an extra 20rmb (the currency of the Peoples Republic of China). Walk further into the mall away from the entrance. After all, you’d hate to pay the extra $1-2 after flying all the way to China. Note how crowded the night market is. I expect that roughly 95% of the people there are groupies hanging with their more daring friends, hoping that they can convince their friend with a food-on-a-stick fetish into eating something bizarre, and I know that sounds like it could be a starting scene to one of the many Long porn vids accessible at fulltube or other adult sites… I’m sure it probably has been used in the past.

Note the wide selection of creatures featured in Indiana Jones insect traps.

So Ben, being a money conscious consumer, shopped around until he found the best buy, and I being a supportive friend, tried to raise the ante whenever possible by pointing out that he should purchase a “sampler” rather than just go scorpion. But I don’t think Ben liked the look of those fat slug looking creatures in the above picture and to the right.

The chef seen in the background dipped the stick into the deep fat fryer. Apparently, scorpion is prepared the same way as Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Lancer pretending to be even slightly tempted to eat scorpion.

Ben and the moment of truth.

Ben says scorpion tastes surprisingly like potato chips. Interesting . . . Cooking chitin in oil is like Lay’s potato chips.

He ate the whole stick of scorpions! He likes it! He really, really likes it!

Conclusion: When you go to China, bring along someone who will eat weird stuff and you will have endless entertainment.

The next posting: China geek tour!

Winners are published in the Writer's of the Future anthologies

I’m very tickled!  I’ve received a letter that I’ve been given a honorable mention for a short story called “Honolulu Hottie”, a Hawaiian cyberpunk story about a security guard who gets mixed up with a woman (the hottie) who is conducting corporate espionage to out a company that conspires to manipulate the pineapple market.

What is Writers of the Future?  They are an organization that uses the late L. Ron Hubbard’s money to hold a contest every quarter.  It’s open only open to amateur writers, i.e. writers who haven’t broke into pro-sales.  According to their rules, I’m right on the edge and will likely lose eligibility in the next twelve months.  So my fingers are crossed that I’ll get a “W” in the next few quarters because the purse is a cool three grand.

We’ve all received spam from social network sites–classmates, facebook, myspace, linked-in, gmail invitations, … etc.

The interesting thing about this kind of spam is that it’s really your friends spamming you: they sign up for a site, and the site collects your friend’s addresses and sends them spams so they can sign up and be cool too.  It’s a strange system.  We all hate spam, but we’ve all spammed each other.

Recently, a friend spammed me about GoodReads.  Being a writing/reading/publishing geek, Good Reads looked like my kind of site so I went ahead and signed up.  Good Reads also dug through my address book and suggested that a site this cool would be just the thing that all my friends would be interested.  I sat there at my keyboard, and thought about it, about the many of my friends who did read and about some of them which read little.  Then I realized there was only one responsible thing to do: spam them because if they weren’t reading, then maybe this would little spam would save their intellectual lives.

Great!  So I did it.  I mercilessly spammed them all:

Yeah, yeah, it’s another one of those damn social networking invites that you keep getting from your “friends.”  Well, maybe you’ll like this one.  It’s about reading rather than hitting up each other for dates or jobs.  I’m sure you’re already linked into one of those by now.

Here is the boiler plate:

I’d like to connect with you on Goodreads so we can share book recommendations.

After I did that, I was surprised because the system *really* spammed them.  I mean it dug so deep into my address book it was contacting people from the relationship equivalent of the Precambrian eon.

Then an interesting thing happened.  For the next two weeks I received emails from people who I hadn’t heard from since the said “Precambrian.”  It was really cool to to reconnect!

Maybe spam, or at least this “white” spam (as opposed to the black arts or “black” spam) isn’t all that bad.

Every time I use an online bank, 401k, or some other service, I shudder. They ask me a bunch of personal questions about my favorite color, whether I wet the bed when I was young, and if I played dress-up with my sister’s barbies. Should that get into the wrong hands… I could be ruined.

I got my third letter yesterday that another company has let my personal information fall into the wrong hands. Sure, maybe someone makes a mistake every now and then, but this is my *third* letter from a third company! It’s frustrating that this keeps happening to me. These companies really ought to get some consulting or auditing services in to get a handle on what’s consistently going wrong – check out these Extra Resources to learn how such companies can become more compliant with the rules and laws in place to protect personal data that they store and process from being breached.

I have a lot of 401k scattered about due to my job-changing lifestyle. I couldn’t collect it all in one account as of yet because timing is important when it comes to rolling over your 401k. That being said, planning for your retirement is incredibly important which is why I am making sure that I have financial resources in place for my retirement now. It is important to remember, however, that there are a variety of different retirement plan options out there. Are you in the process of planning your retirement finances? Take a look at this useful guide for an overview of some of your options: https://www.sofi.com/roth-ira-calculator/. One of my friends sent it to me and it might also be helpful for you.

The letter is upside down to keep the hackers away 😉

My first letter came from Fidelity for my 401k. I’ve forgotten who the third corp is that somehow left my SSN and other unmentionables lying around. Giving your data to these companies (with which we let handle our financial futures, BTW) seems as secure as posting it on Craig’s List.

I think David Brinn was right, that we are going to get a transparent society whether we like it or not. As he said, the question is will it be the right kind of society: one where the citizenry is transparent to the government, or one where everyone is transparent to everyone else, like the state and the people are equals.

Today, we all can Google each other to find out what our Internet lifestyle has been like. It’s really amazing actually. If the FBI or NSA had developed Google, we wouldn’t have ever been able to use it. It would have been labeled as a tool for National Security and the electronic “spying” would have all been one way. But since we all can use it. It’s fair game. I like that!

But with domestic spy programs, suspension of Habeas Corpus if you are considered a terrorist, extraordinary rendition, the government is still in the driver’s seat. If you ever get the opportunity to spy back, you’ll be punished, just like Rubico when he spied into Sarah Palin’s email inbox.

That isn’t fair! Rubico was just doing some warrantless spying to make sure she isn’t a secret terrorist. That’s why we have citizenship arrest.

The battle is still being fought on what kind of transparent society we will get. I say get a membership with the ACLU. They’ve probably even read the Transparent Society. I doubt anyone in the White House reads much of anything beyond the cartoons.

Please comment if you’ve recieved similar letters. I have a feeling that the hackers aren’t just after me.

I’m not trying to be arrogant or take credit for anything YouTube has done. Not only did I not think of it, I wasn’t even an early adopter of watching YouTube. Once I started, I was excited because I’m certain if this thing was around when I was ten, I would be hosting my own talk show by now.

Being a SF fan and kid writer (I started a newspaper in my school and got my mom to do all the typing… she’s pretty cool eh?) I was a gadget guy, and I talked my dad into buying a video camera (VHS) with a flying erase head (that means I could pause while recording, and then restart the recording without noticeable jerks and jolts). I used that camera for shooting things like time lapsed storm clouds, my brother and I acting out videos, computer generated effects (yay Amiga!) and various other projects that you see on a regular basis on YouTube.

Amiga 500

But without YouTube, my celebrity didn’t reach beyond my immediate family or high school. If I had YouTube, I could have expanded my reach to boring many more people in America! I could have been a child star! I could of, but now YouTube is a completely different place than when it just started. Content creators who have been on the platform for years have seen great success, however, there are so many channels and creators on the platform that it has become very difficult for you to reach your audience. Fortunately, there are social media growth tools that allow you to buy Youtube clicks in order to expand your online presence on the site.

Anyway, having YouTube now is better late than never. Now I have a my own YouTube channel, I have meetings with myself pretending I’m part of a board of pretentious asshole studio heads (just like on Max Headroom) and make decisions about what YOU should be watching.

Yeah, like anyone really knows what people want to watch.

Who would have thought that the Numa Numa guy would be an Internet sensation!

He has a million views which is about 999,999 more people watching his stuff than mine. He even has spawned derivative videos like Puss in boots, or Vader. Of course, just like on TV, Numa Numa with a sexy girl gets way more hits. Even if this one is nearly a Rick Roll. (Follow this if you don’t know what a Rick Roll is.)

So now I have global reach with my channel. I’ve had nearly 200 visitors view Debunking the Moss Myth which is a teaser about a short story called “Moss Memoirs” that is part of the Ruins Terra anthology.

Moss that is in a hanging mood

Not only are most of the people not part of my family, they are from Australia, Japan, China, and Canada. So I’m excited about YouTube. It’s like anyone out there can have an idea and just get it out there, and not have to bother visiting a boardroom of pretentious studio execs who pretend to know what America wants to watch, which I think is pretty cool! (I’m still angry they canceled Moon Lighting, Star Trek, and Fire Fly.)

Why should NBC have all the fun in figuring out how we should waste our time. We all want that opportunity.

Though it’s really interesting that just like NBC, so it goes with YouTube: the sexy girl always gets the hits. The harsh truth is that sex sells, whether that be on YouTube, TV, or on a site like https://www.tubev.sex/?hl=de too. Though all is not lost. Because a sexy girl can be trumped by a water buffalo (warning: you need to watch the whole thing all the way through because the ending is unexpected), or a college student being smacked down by the cops (warning: you may learn that despite what your mother told you, life isn’t fair and neither is our government).

Not that I have anything against sexy girls; I like to look at them as much as the next guy, whether that be on a website like www.hdpornvideo.xxx or in real life. But it’s nice to know that people are complicated enough to want to know what happens to a little water buffalo.

Click photo to see sexy girl showering.

Video of Lala in the shower