Bloody Hell!

Despite my protestations to the contrary I apparently haven't posted anything for a month. I know I promised regularity, punctuality, and prolificity, but (as usual) I was full of crap.

So what have I been doing? Well I went to see me mum over Thanksgiving, she is very well thank you, and my youngest brother had a suprise 40th birthday party thrown by his wife. Don't you think there is something just a little bit cruel and sadistic and smaking of veiled agression about a surprise birthday party? Especially when the object is to lure the victim in, and then mercilessly roast them for being old and weird, while pointing out all their flaws and idiosyncracies. Well this was the spirit in which we celebrated my youngest brother's 40th, and count me among the cruelly sadistic aggressors because it was a hell of a good time. His wife made a sort of "This is Your Life" video, and also sang him a torch song she had written about his fishing obsession to the tune of "Bad to the Bone". My other brother gave him a variety of humiliating gag gifts like a years supply of condoms (3), and to skewer his reliance on some over the counter weight loss formula called Stacker 2 he relabelled a container of Whoppers chocolate malt balls "Slacker 2".

For my part I had not planned to do anything in advance, but when his wife asked me to say the grace and make a toast, I came up with something the jist of which was that since whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger we older brothers had done our best to make him as strong as possible, and should take the credit for any success he has had since for not killing him when he was an annoying pain in the ass as a little brother.

Hey, I said it had to be spur of the moment. Were you expecting Georgie Jessel?

I also mentioned his obsession with how our pillows smelled when we were teenagers. I'm not sure why he was trying to bug us by saying our pillow smelled, but It worked and we had to pound him quite often. Now of course he could easily kick my ass, but luckily has abandoned pillow sniffing.

I have been reading some and buying lots, but with no real pattern. I went on a mini kick with Japanese Science Fictio, of which there is surprisingly little in English. I interlibrary loaned three small books one by Shinichi Hoshi who had the first Japanese SF story translated into English and published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction back in like 1963. That story was titled "Bokko-Chan" and it was one of about 30 mostly short-shorts on the collection The Spiteful Planet and Other Stories . They were mostly shorts with twist endings in a Twilight Zone mode, and for the most part pretty clever and original. The other two books were both by Moroto Asai and were really novellas published by The Kodansha English Library in a smaller that standard paperback format intended for Japanese students studying English. "A Trip to the the Stars" was a fairly standard Ruritanian space adventure/mystery about a young girl who wants to leave Earth for adventures in space and does so disguised as her brother with his stolen passport. She immediately gets in the middle of some off-planet political intrigue and by pluck and grit saves the day. The other, much more interesting and ambitious story was called "Green Requiem", was a love story involving a Japanese grad student and an alien girl who is really more plant-like than human, but has been altered to blend into human society although at first she is unaware own history and the dangerous power she posesses. I found it very touching. But, of course, I am a sentimental softy.


One last thought about my brother's party. When your youngest brother turns 40 it can make you reflect on the fleeting years and your own encroaching age, decrepitude, and senescence. Well after a fleeting glimpse of my own impending ending, I realized I don't really feel it. I mean being there with my brothers and sisters, mother and cousins I felt much closer to the kid I was, and very far away from any grown-up old codger I am probably on the way to becoming. I don't mean that I am any kind of eternally youthful Dorian Gray, but only that I usually feel very close to my inner child. My selfish, impulsive, curious, distractable, cheeky, mischevious, annoying, sweet, innocent, inner child, who at any moment might throw himself on the floor and have one of those screaming, twisting, arched-back fits of temper that would get him dragged out of W.T Grants by the ear or who might spend a whole afternoon day-dreaming in his room with nothing but a book and the whole wide world and heaven and angels to contemplate. Anyway, chronology certainly doesn't equal anything when it comes to how old you are. I'll gladly give up the years gone by if I can keep the wonder and joy for the years to come.


Anyway, Happy Birthday Chris. You surprised the hell out of us and turned out to be a real man.