How Did This Get Here?

Using a rope a piece of wood to sit on, these brave fellows repel down the side of my building to clean the windows. I was trying to explain to them, that the windows on the 25th floor were still a bit streaky, but they were all like "Hey guy, we're dangling off the roof by a string and some wood, cut us some slack, eh."

I am just saying, that there is something to be said for getting the job done right the first time.

Open Letter to the Somali Pirates

Ahoy hoy-

First, let me start off by saying, I am a huge admirer of your work. The fact that you even exist completely blows my mind. Secondly, I want to tell you that I understand you (as much as anyone from Wisconsin can). I understand your thirst of a time when plundering booty meant something totally different than in the parlance of our times—when people appreciated the thrill of thieving on the high seas. What I like about you guys is that you're not even a dying breed, you're almost extinct and nothing is really known about you.

Some say you fund terrorism (which we'll have to talk about). Some say you're just a bunch of jerks who hang out and wait for vulnerable ships to cruise around the horn. And some people just say "There are STILL pirates? Wait Somali pirates?!"

Your campaigns have been rather successful. I mean, more than two dozen reported ships have been hijacked off of the coast of your country this year. It seems that you're doing okay for yourselves. But...it could be going a bit better.

I have a proposal.

You need a face for your organization. You need a business man. A negotiator. You need someone who is gonna stand for pirate justice. For example, you stole a bunch of tanks and some other weapons that were going to Kenya or Sudan, depending on whom you ask and you ask for $20 million ransom. Your bluff was called and you LOWERED the amount. And your bluff was called again and you LOWERED it again! And again! Guys, this is NOT how ransom works. Pretty soon you'll be settling for a couple lamps and some pocket lint.

I propose that we have a civil meeting with the Somali Pirate Union™ and we'll work out a plan. We'll get you some more PR so that people aren't constantly surprised by your existence and we'll go through some ransom training. Plus we'll get you some proper pirate gear.

Please, take your time. You don't have to answer me right now. But just think it over, put it to a vote and let's promote plundering in the future.

Good day,
Ryan

Takin' It Easy For All Us Sinners.

In the future, our society is so advanced that our buildings breathe. They also look like beehives and change colors every few seconds.

And there you are, with your wifi and wikis and iPhones. I can't imagine living without breathing buildings.

To quote the Big Lebowski's cowboy-poet narrator, "This is how the whole durned human comedy perpetuates itself."

The Bald One Was Cracking Jokes About the One in Pink Wearing His Kid Sister's Old Gear.

The Soviets, the Chinese and the East Germans walk into an industrial relationship.

In the future, there is the Factory 798 or 798 Art District. It’s in an old factory area that was used to build crazy new electronic components and military weapons.
This huge complex, that now houses a whole load of art galleries, began as a piece of the “Socialist Unification Plan” of the military-industrial relationship between the Soviets and the brand spanking new People’s Republic of China.

China wanted to build and sell stuff. The Soviets wanted to help and so did the Germans of the East. The Soviets with the military business and the dissemination of said products, while the Germans would help with the components and the architectural plans.

The Germans chose a Bauhaus-influenced design over the more ornate Soviet-look and that was the first in a long line of fisticuff matches for these two highly tense countries.

The Kraut’s plans were to build large indoor spaces designed to let the maximum amount of natural light into the workplace to save on energy. They built huge ceilings with large arches and insanely big windows. The buildings were huge because everyone had delusions of grandeur and shit needed to be big.

So skip over a bunch of details, all these factories pumped out weapons and devices and trinkets and other hastily made things and the complex was under a lot of pressure during Deng Xiaoping’s reforms of the 1980’s. Not many state-owned enterprises got the money they needed and eventually the Dashanzi Factory Complex was rendered useless by the early 1990’s.

Well, the buildings in the complex were now empty and Beijing’s Avant Garde artists were looking for a home around the same time. So they packed up their scarves and headed on over.

In our future time, 798 gets in demand art exhibitions from all over the world (ranging from rad to slightly above a bag of shit), tons of stinky artists looking for a home and foreign hipster doofuses looking for the free booze.

Oh yeah, it almost got demolished to make room for the Olympic stadiums, I guess. But people from all over the world got all crazy about it and now they’ve redone the roads and started charging more for coffee! Three cheers for communist capitalism in the future!

The Tranquility of The Temple of Heaven

I am going to email this to Slayer to see if they can make a concept album around it...

The Sprite Holster.

The other future day, I was meeting a friend for dinner and she was running a bit late. No problem. It was a nice evening and I was just going to wait on the corner for her. I was minding my own business observing the hierarchy of taxi drivers. You can tell the more respected ones because they make the others take the foreigners. Since no one tips, taking the foreigners usually sucks because they assume we don't know how to tell you where were going. It's all pretty amusing. Anyway...

I noticed this woman walking towards me and howling some nonsense. I didn't think it was directed at me. But I was the only one standing there. She was in her early 30's, was wearing some horrible insect killing perfume, dressed even worse and she had a Sprite can wedged in her cleavage. I turned away from her, hoping that if I didn't acknowledge her, she wouldn't speak to me. No such luck.

NI HAO! She gave me an open-palmed slap on the ass. I turned around and started backpeddling. She got all up in my face and told me that I was going to take her salsa dancing. I was trying to picture us salsa dancing, but I could only wonder why she had a soda can wedged in between her mopey looking breasts. Perhaps she was trying to smoke and talk on the phone at the same time and couldn't part with the rest of her soda? Maybe she always wanted to yell "No hands!"? Or she was waiting to bum rush a foreigner...

I ended up telling her that I wasn't interested and "No No No..." about 100 times before she took her can out of its holster and slammed it into the concrete and started cursing me out in Mandarin.

She stomped on down the block, turning around and yelling at me every few yards until I couldn't hear her any longer. Hopefully, she got some one to take her salsa dancing or at least buy her a new Sprite.