The Space Toast Pages 11 2008

Oh Great, Now I'm Under Quarantine

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 11:24:00 GMT

An Example of False Trademark Assertion

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:24:00 GMT

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Michael Warren Principal FunWithData.com

Retired Addiction

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:41:00 GMT

Cotorich. I have no idea who she is or what she's saying, but I can't look away.

And just to round out our week of Japanese WTF...

I can find no artist or provenance for this image, but I find it brilliantly twisted:

And as a chaser, a pretty girl in a bikini, playing a violin. Quite well in fact:

Wives

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:44:00 GMT

Issue 144, for the week of 8/15/2004

Toast Note: My typical strategy when I spend a few weeks tapping away at something I don't really understand is to post it to the Space Toast Page and let posterity ridicule me. This is three seperate sketches on a theme. I'll probably be embarrassed by this later, but there's been worse in 145 Space Toast Pages.

It's night, and I'm upstairs at my desk. She comes into the room and puts her arms around me, resting her chin on my head. I reach back and find her waist, never able to just accept affection. "How is it going?" she asks. Not well, I say. She hugs me a little harder and pulls me back. "Come play with me. You're not going to solve it by staring at it." My script has three things happening where they shouldn't be, and they're plugging the story before the second set of commercials. "Just come with me." I have to write in my book, I say. I jot down my ideas, as they stand, to pick up later. She keeps wheeling my chair back. I finish fast, throw the pen down, turn around and kiss her. A compact brown face draws back, darker patches around her eyes that make them seem larger, almost glowing in the shadow from the desk lamp.

She tosses my shirt away. I feel her breasts against my inner thighs. She slowly runs her tongue up me, looking me in the eye with a playful edge of worship. Her tongue slides down, and she closes her lips over the end of my penis. Long black hair falls over her face, and she brushes it away with one hand. I touch the sides of her head, feeling the solidness, the smallness of her as she moves on me. Her head bobs gently. Her hair falls over her face again, and I fold it behind her ear. I can hear myself breathing. She redoubles her movements, and I have to shut my eyes. I push her head down and lift it back, pushing myself into her throat. She grunts a bit. I come, digging my hands into her hair. I open my eyes. She's staring at me, lips still closed around me. Another, smaller spurt goes into her mouth. She's so calm, her eyes looking back at mine, blinking slowly. I stroke the sides of her face again. I want to hold her. She pulls off and opens her mouth. There's a little pool around her tongue. With a look so clear it's almost a question, she closes her mouth and swallows. She smiles, and I need to hold her. I got a little rough back there. Did I hurt you? Lying against me, she shakes her head no, and rubs her ear against my chest.

Midnight or so, perhaps the same night, perhaps a different night. I can see the shape of the episode's script in my head, and I'm untroubled. We've been fucking for so long I couldn't come if I wanted to. She's had her tense, shaky first orgasm, and its easier cousins. She breaths deeply and steadily, in and out with each slow thrust and retreat. Her eyes glow, half open, the only part of her face I can see. Little tears glint at the corners of her eyes. She puts her arms around me, and wants to be held.

Papers, in neat little piles, surround her at her desk. I come in and start to knead her shoulders. Her head rolls forward. "Oh that feels good," she breaths. She rocks backward and forward, whispering encouragements, until the last knot is gone. Her back feels supple and hot. I kiss the nape of her neck and disappear again.

How is your mom? "She's fine. She sends her love." She puts the phone back on the charger. I'm not quite what she expected for you, am I? "No, you are! You're good to me... but in terms of my mother's shopping list? No." Shopping list? "You were supposed to be Punjab, come from a specific village..." Even after your parents moved here? "Mom has connections. It's just the shopping list. All moms do it. I'll do it. But, see, unlike your mother, mine always had it in mind that she would end up choosing someone for me, even though she always said I could marry whoever I wanted." I'll assume this is an Indian thing. "That's like saying it's a Northern Hemisphere thing." I'm sorry. "Don't be." And what did you picture? "You. Just darker." Well, sorry, again. "We can't all be perfect. By the way, are you going to work on your script tonight?" Yes, I have to.

* * *

I am to understand that, sexually, I had a number of bad American habits to be broken, when we first got together. I tended to hedge my bets, was concerned about things like performance and stamina -- cheats to keep my sex life separate from my regular life, hence my obsession with it. The whole thing did indeed became far less stressful the more she got to me. She says she'll tell me if I do anything wrong, but aside from "stop thinking!" ("Você está pensando!") she's been pretty mute so far.

That's our girl. She's so much like her mom. Tottering around. She's got the same hair, brown, and always a mess. That little dress looks like it was stitched together out of whatever was left over from her mom's outfit. Lots of earth tones. They both look a little like a shanty village. "Menina," she scolds. Our little girl immediately changes direction away from the street. It's all the same to her. She's a little ship, and we're her pylons. She runs between us, looking thrilled at the world.

Two years later. Our little girl has had a nightmare about mommy and daddy dying, and I'm rocking her to sleep. What can I say to her? Years before she was born, her grampy died unexpectedly; why couldn't we? My wife looks at me, and I look back at her. Rocking.

Hmm. Our little girl has walked in on us four or five times without noticing anything unusual. Fortunately she's used to mommy and daddy kissing. The bathroom door is inside our room; that's the problem -- like it was in my house growing up. I now feel sorry for my parents. Item #341 I will never bring up with my mom.

"You married a Brazilian, a sculptor, and a MassArt student -- that's three times you were warned."

We're below my mom's house, dipping our feet in and watching the lake grow dark. She turns around and rests what's left of her bun in my lap. I scratch her head absently and move our beer bottles away from her elbow. She chuckles. What? "Did you ever fantasize about a girl like me, Matthew?" I'm not that creative. "Sadistic, you mean?" Frankly, I wouldn't have liked to get my hopes up. She stares at me until we hear a pad pad pad pad pad of little feet, closing fast.

* * *

Nordic. The irony of repainting the house in Denmark Nordic style is that Nordic comes from the U.S. The irony of us is that we both look Danish but have only been here once before. She withdraws the stencil. "Yes?" It looks great. She beams.

"Which way?" She takes my hand. I was overwhelmed, she was overwhelmed, now we're thinking. Left. There will be a market by the train. We can eat down by the river. When does the Metro stop running? "Midnight." She knows. She smiles, hair matted, two days without a shower, mares-tails sticking to her forehead. I have to kiss her.

The river flows by sluggishly at night. It brings up a memory. I don't say it. She's tucking into her bread. "I like Europe. I like these places." She burps, putting her fist to her mouth. "I like how children here can just... be kids." Another memory. I don't say it again. I like being within five feet of you. She looks at me. There is a pause, then she looks away, smiling. "You want to have kids?" I nod. I'm still looking at her. I don't think either of us was expecting that.

Copenhagen, for the first time. I'm trying to dredge phrases out of the phrasebook but I can't stop bursting out laughing every few moments. (Poor guy at the desk.) I'm trying to say "Mr. and Mrs. Rasmussen."

We've got the giggles out of us. It's late. There are snores around us in the hostel. We're on a top bunk. I rest the hand holding a condom in her hand, and she closes her fingers around it. No movement. Barely breathing. I kiss her. Her cheeks are flushed. She puts it on me, kissing me again. I slide her to me, still trying to be as quiet as possible. Every curve, the full length of her body, bulges solidly against me. I part her shorts, kiss her again, and move against her. I'm inside her. She breathes out sharply through her nose. I feel it against my cheek. I push in again. She exhales, and immediately draws a breath. Her face screws up. She breathes raggedly through her nose, body rigid, pressed against mine. I break the kiss, raise my head and listen with one ear as she pants quietly against the other. She grabs fistfuls of my tee-shirt. I rub my hand across her bottom, squeezing her. Our mouths come together again. She's shaking a bit. Her hips jerk. A small creak from the bed. Her jaw spasms, and she whines. 3... 2... 1... Her body relaxes against mine. Her breathing redoubles. She opens her eyes, hair stuck to her face, glistening with sweat. The sight of her is more than I can handle. I bundle her in my arms, and come.

It turns out that, when allowed to, she makes quite a bit of noise. The house smells like paint. It's a similar moment. We're both coming back to ourselves. "Do you love me?" Yeah. "Will you always love me?" Yeah. She searches my face, looking from eye to eye. "Look at me, and love only me?" Hai. (It's transitioned into a bit of a movie we saw, but I know she's being semi-serious.) She looks in my eyes. "I can't read people like you can." I can't understand people like you can. "Did you ever think about... this, before we met?" Of course. There's an odd look on her face. "Am I what you expected?" Sometimes, I answer; remember that thing I wrote about it? "Yeah." You kind of remind me of that last girl. She frowns. "I didn't really like her." Why not? She was the most human. "Yeah, but you didn't really want her, like the first girl. And she wasn't as cool as the second one." I didn't say you were her, I said you kind of reminded me of her. "Then did you ever fantasize about someone more like me?" I'm sure of it. Maybe a dozen unique daydreams and fantasies a week, of varying length and complexity -- I only wrote down three.

Softball Sketch

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:38:00 GMT

I'm in the "husbands' box" with a few other tired-looking guys, working late on my laptop. The game is about halfway through. We have a vulnerable lead. It's beginning to rain. She'll be muddy, cold and irritable when she gets off the field. I expect she'll want to go straight home instead of soaking in the clubhouse. I happen to be looking up vaguely as Fukuyama #43 sends a line drive past the first baseman. My wife scoops it up, pops it back to first and ends the inning. I take a sip from my can of tea, feeling like a good husband.

"Nine for twelve? That's a pretty good season!" The little girl nods shyly under her baseball cap, clutching an autographed notebook page. Local celebrity means something here. She's an obvious pro, bobbing her head and grinning like a tv idol as she fills the girl's head with league softball dreams. My wife's plan is to become a history teacher when she retires from the league, preferably at a lower secondary (middle) school. I suspect she just wants to do it so she can coach a girls' team. She'd be good at it. The late evenings away from home will continue long past her softball career, but at least she'll be able to ditch that haircut.

We've made dinner, eaten, and worked down through a bottle of sake, chatting quietly on the floor. Her face is bright red. Is that what I'm laughing about? I don't remember. Everything is good. We roll around on the carpet giggling. Soon we're making love. She's giving me the baby eyes. This is why I came here. Sometimes it all makes sense. She's out by the time I put her to bed. I get her a glass of water, and down one myself. She snuggles against my hand as I lay down beside her, breathing hard in her sleep.

"What is the MATTER WITH YOU!?" she yells in Japanese, tears streaming down her face. I don't understand this mood. She calls me stupid, shit, foreign. Hard little fists smash like fireworks against my chest and arms. She's much too fast to block. All I can do is force myself closer and take the windup out of her punches until she cries herself down. It won't take long. Domestic violence only became a crime here in 1997. I'll be sore tomorrow. She'll be distant tonight, then overly upbeat, and probably do something for me. This is deeper than me being boneheaded, and not a real couple's fight. It just happens, once or twice a year. All I know is that her life is an elaborate comedy of manners that I'm too dense to understand, and sometimes it's too much for her.

It's the annual Husbands Game -- actually a mishmash of husbands, boyfriends, and more than a few dads. (The qualifications are flexible.) We're humiliating ourselves as usual along with the equally hopeless men from Himeji, but it's all for a good cause. Mishina's dad just huffed and puffed his way to a base hit. The local diehard fans are Queen stomping. Hyuuga's boyfriend played college ball and he's up after me. If I can get at least a single, we might do okay. I spot my wife in the stands and trip over a bat, to more cheers from the crowd. She does an elaborate, Kabuki-grade facepalm.

When we met, I bought her a drink, not knowing that I probably shouldn't do that when she was out bonding with her team. We dated for about a week. I remember feeling that I'd hit a wall in getting to know her. I might have called it off. Then everything went wrong. It was the year her team failed to reach the Championships, for the first time since 1995. People were going to be fired. She was taking it hard. She needed company, couldn't maintain a face. Two fans had committed suicide. It was the worst day of her life. She called me a little before midnight, and poured her heart out in the back of a steakhouse.

We're home. Practice was cancelled. It's a Tuesday evening. We're on the lawn playing catch in the fading light. Her throws are perfect, flat and quick. I lob it back to her. The phrase "speaking with silence" comes to mind, one I've never understood. She watches me instead of the ball. Her eyes are smiling. There's a weird tranquility to the moment. The lull of the neighbors' kids bubbles over the hedges. My wife looks content.

(This is basically the same exercise as "Wives" from 2004.)

Retired Addiction

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:10:00 GMT

"The Boosh"

I've never heard comedy with quite this pace. And the music is oddly good too.

Let America be America Again

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:07:00 GMT

by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

Langston Hughes (1902-1967) was one of the greatest American writers of the Harlem Renaissance. This poem was posted today on 3 Quarks Daily in honor of this historic day. I wished to reproduce it in full, as it sums up a number of my more Danish feelings this morning.

For the benefit of the archive, Barack Obama was last night declared President Elect. Democrats have taken simple majorities in the House and Senate. Here in California, a parental notification law for pregnancy termination by minors has failed, but Proposition 8 -- which I volunteered in opposition to -- has passed, revoking the right of same-sex couples to wed. Similar measures have passed in Florida and Arizona. While it may be arguable that the Republican Party is in shambles this morning, with it's largest national figures now tied either to the losing Presidential ticket or the historically unpopular Presidential administration, immense burdens lie ahead for all Americans in the arenas of financial restructuring, job creation, universal health care, climate change, the national debt, and human rights. The mistake of the progressive movement of the late 1960s-early 1970s was believing that they had won simply by showing up, their neglect leading inexorably to the Neoconservative revolution of 1980 which continues to defy responsibility on all of the above issues. May we not fail again.

Please Note: New Phone Number

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 19:13:00 GMT

New state. New home. New number. (New life? Hope so.)

Matt Rasmussen: 818.731.8074.

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