Lancer Kind

Ever since Honolulu Hottie got honorable mention, I’ve been obsessing about what story to send for next time.  The contest happens quarterly, so I have four months to select the story which will put me over the top.

I’ve been staring at my “inventory” of stories (I have the titles written on stickies and posted on the wall), but deciding which one is tough.  I’m convinced that either they are all great or they are all of the same low quality.  😉  So now I’m considering ways to raise my game.  Maybe I need go “metaphysical” (meta has to be better, right?) such as a ouija board or maybe dripping candle wax over some manuscripts and see if I can devine the face of L. Ron Hubbard in the splatter.

Meanwhile, I’ll find a place to hang the certificate.

Now that I’ve been staring at the certificate for a while, I’ve noticed there is this gold pen in the center.  Suppose I rig the certificate to a bottle with the pen pointing outward, set the manuscripts around it, and give it a spin, and let Mr. Hubbard decide?

Naturally, China has done a lot of great things.  They have the great wall.

They’ve recently hosted the Olympics.

They allow one to get a latte in a place once known as the “Forbidden City”.

In Hangzou, I saw an amazing outdoor show with people dancing on a lake.  It was amazing seeing a cast of at least 200 performing on/in water.

Things are really moving along nicely in this authoritarian country.  In fact, China is the home of the world’s coolest train.  An honest to goodness levitating train!

Notice what the sign says above my head.

For $15 you can ride it from a Shanghai suburb to the airport and reach 430 kilometers/hour (266 mph).  It was fast, smooth, and awesome!

In Hong Kong, the ENTIRE city across two islands is rigged to do a laser/light/music show every 6PM, more impressive than the celebration at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Once again, real life trumps fiction.  Amazing!

Where else other than China would you get to see such creative translations?

A sign at the top of a 14 story building.

But doesn’t everyone know that trying to throw the Thing is 不好? (not ok)

(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.