The realism of body physics in Halflife2 makes me believe that the developers must have killed a lot of hobos during the making of that game.

Watching Maury in the morning before work here helps me realize how good things are going for me right now as several women tested 4-25 men to determine which of them is the father of their child.

Last news I got before heading out the door was that the fathers had not yet been found.

Ever the loyal servant of the internet, I've been tasked to fly back to Toronto for another week fighting the client hordes this sunday.

After spending 20% of my year away from home, I could really stand to stick around a bit these days.

Peter has written a fine essay to answer my question of the natural order of pirates, ninjas, and samurai.

We've been on a weeks long collision course; our concentric orbits shifting slowly in the pull of the blackhole we found ourselves entangled within. The hulls of our craft pulled tightly around the ribs that formed us and our teeth clenched in every passing minute.

Surely what doesn't unite us at the center might tear us completely apart.

David Hasselhoff vs Patrick Swayze.

Discuss. (rhea, I already know what you think).

There's nothing that fuels a good blog like a dismal personal life. The biting sarcasm rides high and bitterness is passed out like halloween candies for everyone to enjoy.

That said, I really don't have a lot to moan about right now. So, I'm sorry. Come ruin my life if you want some more entertainment.

On the other hand, if you do ruin my life, you'll miss the post about me making a lamp out of you.

Warning: those of weak constitution should skip this post. Seriously, don't whine to me after if you throw up or cry.

I'm not sure what I find more offensive at cactus club restaurants; the boring overpriced food or the fact that they have what look like jew skin lamps in their establishments. Maybe the food would taste better if I weren't reminded of mass genocide every time I looked up from my plate.

Realizing that I'm too busy or distracted to do a proper commented photo album, I've just used google's new free photo software to crank out a larger album of my china pictures. Use your imagination to figure out what's what.

note: the kid in fd1040030.jpg is taking a piss on the sidewalk while on his hands and knees. That's what makes china awesome.

I didn't anticipate that maybe by finding two of something I've really wanted, that I might find myself even more lost than before.

It would take the entire holy trinity to stop me from finishing my grilled cheese sandwich.

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you... The Obesotron 2000.

I seem to have caught myself some sort of chest cold which I doubt is avian flu or SARS (damn you dan), but I've got to return to work tomorrow and disassemble the huge tower of furniture and office flotsam that my co-workers have lovingly piled into my workspace during my 4 week absence.

I haven't slept a proper night's sleep since I've returned last week which I blame partly on the jet lag and partly on my brain's inability to shut the fuck up but it'll be nice to get back into some sort of routine again. Inbetween Half-Life 2, work, being ill, wanting to eat meat ALL the time, and trying to pen late night emails though, sleep might take a back seat. I might even try to post the other 110 pics of my trip I've chosen soon.

I'm proud enough a geek to admit that the imminent arrival of Half-Life 2 is totally giving me a hard on.

Halo 2 on the other hand... meh...

Because I need to go piss around with the boys tonight, I've just dumped a stack of photos into a directory for those who want to preview the china (and hong kong and macau) that I saw. Click the photo to the right browse the directory, or download the zip of the files in there.

update: I've since updated the gallery with a few notes and a better interface. It's still ass, but at least less so now.

addendum: For those who care, the camera was a Lomo LC-A using a mixture of Fuji Reala 100, and Fuji Superia 100 and 200. Most photos untouched in photoshop, though a couple received mild level adjustments.

I guess I promised you all whores and that's what I'm going to have to deliver.

While Beijing, our first stop didn't show us much of the local prostitution scene, Hangzhou's pimps came out for the annual whoresgiving parade the night I arrived. From the moment I stepped out of our upscale downtown hotel, a female pimp was talking up a mandarin storm about getting my massage on. Too soon to even find the humor of it, I was waving her off but she followed me briefly trying to convince me of the benefits of her wares in a language I couldn't understand.

We made our way across the rather huge downtown area encountering cheap swarthy pimps everywhere. One tried convincing me in english when he realized that I don't speaky chineasy with the lines "local girls, right up to your room, massagu" while moving his hands in a creepy air massage motion. The tide was relentless; while another female pimp was trying to talk us into some action, another pimp sitting on the sidewalk just barked out "massage" at us. In Suzhou one even used hand gestures to try to fill the communication gap, making the international sign of massage of pumping his right index finger into a circle made with his left thumb and index finger.

In Shanghai we cruised the neighborhood around our hotel to bear witness to the local life and saw kids pissing on the street (not the sidewalk, the road), men pissing in alleys behind trash piles, and brothels lining the streets. They often sported spinning barber poles but lacked salon chairs for any real work. In one sat a group of five provocatively dressed young ladies on a couch watching tv, the only source of light in the room. Frosted strips of glass secured the privacy of some places, while at another the door glass doors were open as one girl attempted to wave me in from across the street.

Underneath the bright casino lights in Macau are a more international selection of working girls. Tall russian girls with attitude stood meters away from prospective clients drinking on patios tossing their hair every few minutes. Some of the russian girls eyed the others with cold contempt, looking like they would have taken a broken bottle across the other's face at first provocation. Macau's economic backbone seemed flagrantly highlit from the Hong Kong ferry terminal where the travel agencies had their windows postered with ads proclaiming "Just Sex" and featuring pictures of half naked women with prices attached.

In asia, pimping just might actually be easy.

Happy Armistice Day.

While I've already touched on the topic of beggars in china, they were one of the most striking and haunting memories from my trip.

Panhandlers in vancouver have since lost status as recipients of my spare change since most panhandlers here still have use of all of their limbs are are usually of employable age. In the city of Hangzhou, I witnessed a beggar whose face was of melted flesh and whose right hand posessed a thumb and only stumps where his fingers used to be. His left was better, still in ownership on a few mangled fingers which together with his nub of a right hand used to play a cheap electric keyboard.

Whether or not he was able to actually produce any recognizable music I can't recall as I was too focused on his physical and economic situation to consider his art at the moment. I had already walked past when I stopped and considered that if some poor deformed four fingered motherfucker has to play the keyboard on the streets of china for a living, he deserved some of my money. I went back and dropped a few bills into his coin filled plate and walked away feeling no less guilty for being a wealthy foreigner in a land so filled with economic and social disparity.

On a brighter note he was one of the last deserving beggars I came across during the 10 remaining days of my trip. The female panhandlers in shanghai that approached us looked well fed and dressed and their pleas of "Me so hungy" fell on unsympathetic ears. The fact that I saw the poor busting their asses for less money than I was handing out to beggars of choice made saying no pretty easy.

Up next, prostitutes or traffic. You decide.

Still dazed by my jet lag and trying to come up with the formula for my big chinky tale, I thought I'd start off stereotypically with the food hilights post.

In Shaoxing, I encountered an incredible beef dish. Think tender strips of beef encrusted and fried in crushed rice noodle. Tender moist meat, perfectly seasoned with a light crunchy crust. I could see myself snacking on a cardboard bucket full of these if not for health concerns.

Hangzhou met me with a hunk of pork belly, braised in its own miniture clay pot. The meat pulled away like velvet ribbons and the fat melted like savoury ice cream on the tongue. Despite eating similar pork belly dishes for the last 5 meals, this one pulled hair all the way to the top of the list as the one to remember.

In Macau I met the most beautifully roasted pork with crackling light and crunchy like no other. Salty and served with a sweet soy, it was roast pork perfected.

Macau's history as a portuguese penal colony for young boys brought around the creation of the portuguese egg tart. This sweet creamy egg custard tart, carmelized on the top and housed in a buttery light crust composed of thin beautiful layers was probably one of the finest desserts I've ever eaten.

In Hong Kong, a liter of australian milk found its way into my heart. Never have I tasted milk that tasted so incredibly natural. Creamy, sweet and milky.

More to come later...

I screwed up just this -> <- much and ended up flying in on a cargo plane full of rubber dogshit out of hong kong (if you don't get this reference, you need to watch Top Gun again).

It'll take me a while to piece together some writing and photos about the trip, but I can immediately say I'm thankful to be back home in a city where I can tell that the sky is blue simply by looking up, for not having to smell feces just because I walked past a storm drain, and for not having to eat any more chinese food.

In world news, the majority (51%) of americans are dumb. There would seem to be statistical data to prove it now.

I'm sitting in a hotel in shanghai using a computer without a browser that will let me read my gmail, access blogger.com, or even access my own website (chinese decency filters probably blocked me ages ago).

I can only hope this post gets through the magic email posting system intact until I can secure a more reasonable internet connection.

It's been a hectic week starting in Beijing, a city that reeked of pollution the moment I stepped off the plane. I had thought it was the smell of jet fumes but soon realized that the entire sprawling city smelled the same horrid way. It was an experience if anything, but I soon learned that in Beijing that the food and girls are very much the same; timid and altogether rather unappealing.

The most memorable site in beijing must have been the beggars that changed the landscape of my compassion. Beggars dragged themselves through the streets suffering from deformities; begging for food if you had it and money if you didn't. The twisted flesh and limbs was a pitiful and horrific sight which made the wholebodied panhandlers of vancouver seem like pathetic shadows of the underpriveledged. I gave a woman begging with her children 10 yuan which could feed them for a day but wasn't worth enough back home to buy my morning coffee. The broken unnatural legs of another beggar were supported only by a plywood board with wheels that he dragged himself along with by his hands. I said to eric that I should give the blind erhu player some cash to which he responded "How do you know he's really blind?". The answer in all its simplicity was "that fucking guy has no eyes".

We spent only two days in beijing before jumping on an overnight train to shanghai, a city impressive the moment I stepped out of the train station. A true metropolis awaited me here unlike the low-rise sprawl that beijing consisted of. Shanghai was only our gateway to the city of Shaoxing though, a beautiful city surrounded by picturesque mountains and great food. The women of Shaoxing is a story of it's own. Our guide was a shaoxing beauty with the cat- like eyes of the region framing her black pearl pupils which glistened in the light. We walked down one of the main streets of the town and witnessed that nature had blanketed the city in beautiful women like caviar smothered on a blini.

Our next stop was in Hangzhou, a much larger city whose bright city lights made way for cheap pimps who followed me down streets pedalling local girls for massages and more. The were relentless and I soon bored of repeating "bu yao" (no thanks) repeatedly to these machines of sexual exploitation, trying to eek out their existance on the sweat of even less priveledged women.

There's plenty more to tell and I'm burning through film like charlie sheen through coke at his peak, but i'm running out of time. I hope this post makes it up, and I hope I can access some real internet soon enough.