Out of Scotch Tape

Distress on the face...



...with the knowledge that there's no one to spare a square...



...can lead to a hideous mess...



You know, I think there was a dime at the bottom of that bowl too.

The things a person can shit out when scared...

Currently listening to: "Psychedelic Souljam" by Taku Iwasaki featuring Lotus Juice, from the Soul Eater Original Soundtrack.

Another Bleck Bathroom Gripe (I realize the nastiness of the pun)

I will never understand the need to use a bathroom stall right next to an occupied bathroom stall in a bathroom full of empty bathroom stalls.

What's the joy in that? Do you think I want to hear your pees and/or unmentionables? Do you think I want to smell them? Do you like to smell mine? Please, spare you and myself the disgust of that.

It's just well gross.

Currently listening to: "New" by No Doubt. Shocking? Yeah but that's the time period Gwen had talent. Oh wait, maybe that was all the other members of the band that carried her. Yeah, that makes sense.
I wouldn't mind singing this on "Rock Band"...

Pumpkin, the 8th HOchie.

Our little orange cat Pumpkin has given us many interesting times for the past 6 years he's been with us. It's always cute when he plays because he doesn't do much of that anymore but we know he could be a goalie due to that stellar save he did a few years ago when a ball was tossed towards the couch.

He's not so cute at 6:20 in the morning when he wants to come into the room and complains outside my door. He's even less cute when he takes it upon himself to bite and paw me awake, or tear up the presents and clothes sitting on my chair.

Times aren't good for me when he jumps in front of my computer screen as I'm typing up blog pozostx and can't see the screen. See that? Case in point. Good Grief.

It is also very unpleasant in the winter when he and I are so static-ie that we cannot get too close to one another without being constantly shocked.

We hate when he gets really vicious over a treat or some catnip. He begs for people's dinner and will eat just about anything. He's not very "cattish" which works out well for us but goddamn it, he is smart and it's scary as all hell.

Today, the trademark low bellow of a meow was heard. I quickly opened the door to see what the matter was because that's when that meow is usually used - when something is wrong. I inquired of Papa HOchie if the door to the basement which houses the kitty litter box was closed, which it was. Papa HOchie flew downstairs to open the door but no Pumpkin could be found.

Fearing the worst, ie that Pumpkin couldn't hold his bidness, I heard Papa HOchie anxiously call out to me.

Well, Pumpkin couldn't hold his business for sure but took matters into his own little paws...

...and used the toilet.

Yes.

Our cat has learnt how to pee in the toilet without being formally trained.

He must have learnt to do so by watching us all these years or maybe the Betch is right and he has been using the internet for dirty business when I'm not around.

As I said, scary.

I've come to the conclusion that all those times when Pumpkin tried to "off" us were not actually 'accidents/catcidents'. He really was trying to kill the lot of us!

Memorable Quotes of Last Week:

Couple walking down the street, man to girl: Brenda give me a kiss...
Crazy guy on street overhearing convo.: Brenda can shove it up her ass!

Or 2 on phone to H1: You want to know what I was doing? I was killing some cats.
H1: Uh...

Yeah, Beetchie...We Are SO There

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Bathroom Etiquette

The constant trauma of using the restroom at work has finally led to a meltdown and a few clever ideas.

Today, on two separate occasions, I found two unwanted nasties sitting proudly within the bowels of two separate bowls.

Mortified and ill I remained for a better part of the morning upon finding suspect number 1, which by the way was a Number 2. I recovered sometime after lunch, only to have a relapse when I discovered the second monstrosity later that afternoon.

A gross misuse of the facilities has prompted a suggestion be made 'anonymously' to the higher ups.

Due to people and their shit, signs should litter the bathroom with the slogan: LFW

"Did You Remember To:

Look,
Flush,
Wash*?"

*Yes, there have been instances of non-hand washers too.
Disgusting? Beyond that, yeah.

What's so hard about looking before you leave, people?

Currently listening to: "Solve et Coagula" by Mudvayne, but really hearing "Mr. Hankey The Christmas Poo" in my head. For shame. Remember that one son with the piece of corn stuck in it? Blech.

And I Am Very, Very Happy...

Public toilet has 1,000 stalls in four stories

Chongqing officials hope for Guinness record

BEIJING, China (AP) -- They're flush with pride in Chongqing, where a recently opened porcelain palace features an Egyptian facade, soothing music and more than 1,000 toilets spread out over 30,000 square feet.


Some of the 1,000 stalls are open air overlooking the street in Chonging, China.

Officials in the southwestern Chinese city plan to ask Guinness World Records to have the free four-story public bathroom listed as the world's largest, state-run China Central Television reported Friday.

"We are spreading toilet culture. People can listen to gentle music and watch TV," said Lu Xiaoqing, an official with the Yangrenjie, or "Foreigners Street," tourist area where the bathroom is. "After they use the bathroom they will be very, very happy."

Footage aired on CCTV showed people milling about the sprawling facility and washing their hands at trough sinks. For open-aired relief, there's a cluster of stalls without a roof.

Some urinals are uniquely shaped, including ones inside open crocodile mouths and several topped by the bust of a woman resembling the Virgin Mary.

There are also plans to build a supermarket nearby, which will sell toilet-related items, CCTV reported.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

...yes. Yes I am.

or at least I was until I saw the sinks:



Well, at least they're wearing undies.

photo source: www.cnn.com

The Tokyo-Ho to Kyoto-Ho Japan Chronicles - Day 7

Day 7 - Saturday, June 2nd

Well this was fairly exciting!

We traveled on the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Kyoto. The usual 8 hour trip by regular rail was only 2.5 hours on the Shinkansen.



The Shinkansen was not only super fast but also super quiet. It was quite amazing how smooth a ride it was. But while fast and impressive, that couldn't stop noisy little bastard children from invading our car. We would be the ones to get the noisiest children in Japan. There's nothing worse than a train riddled with brats, save the one bitchy fat assed baby who sat in his own chair and grimaced like nobody's business. Damned future Yakuza.

Misadventure number 1 of Kyoto was finding our Ryokan. We eventually found it by following a kind old lady who lead us to the place but not before accosting a plain clothed police officer? We're not sure what he was but he was awesome and his accent was awesome. He could have been from Osaka. He managed to help us some, even if all he did was direct us to an old lady after 15 minutes of listening to his prattling off about something. He wouldn't let us go for a while there.

The Ryokan was nice and was run by Yumiko, a woman we did not want to mess with.

Bad shot of our room -



And then came the communal bath which was quite sketchy. I tried to make a pact with Beetchie, who refused to shower the same time I wanted to until of course, she had to go clean her tattoo and begged me to come with her.

The WTF Moment of the Day:

For some reason the toilets were quite smelly. We later discovered that was due to mildew but man, was that nasty everytime we had to use the bathroom.

The Day's Eats:

1. Pork and rice for breakfast, salmon and rice for breakfast minus the natto this time.

2. Shrimp Fillet sandwiches laden with onions and potato salad sandwiches also laden with onions.

The Tokyo-Ho Japan Chronicles - Day 1.5

Yes. Tokyo-Ho has returned.

Let the slew of blogs begin!

Day 1.5 - Saturday May 26 (New York Time)/Sunday May 27 (Tokyo Time)

We will start with the incident at the airport while waiting for our departing flight to Japan. Before I continue, it should be noted that you all should expect many 'incidents' because as you all know by now, when Beetchie and I are together, we have some mini and some not so mini-misadventures.

The incident involved Beetchie kicking a Japanese flight attendant, too polite to cry out in pain but could only utter a muffled "ya ta ta" while hopping on one foot. We're not sure though if Amy Winehouse the Flight Attendant lost that tooth due to meth. use or after she was kicked.

Japan Airlines, I must say, has crap in-flight entertainment (and not just because I almost destroyed my in-flight entertainment remote control by getting it stuck on the side and later on destroying my fingers trying to get it out). Being affiliated with American Airlines will probably do that to you though. And here's hoping that Virgin Atlantic does not screw me over come Thursday (after I boasted about it for months).

The food sucked and was questionable, and we're convinced gave me the belly heebie jeebies. Ugh, it was not good times.

As you can well imagine, getting off the near 14 hour gruelling flight of bad food, bad entertainment and broken sleep, with a heebie jeebie belly was not fun. And then to discover that the nearest bathrooms were Eastern style,



was also not fun.

We needed to find that Oakhotel Inn quickly while navigating the Subway system but thanks to a Subway Smart NYC kid Beetchie, we were able to get our bearings and find our way to the Oakhotel without much trouble.

Oakhotel Inn was cute. We now value the greatness of private bath so much more but we were still naive to that reality being that we had no idea how much that place spoilt us until Day 5 of the trip. More to come in that future blog post...

Quote of that Day:

"I'll get used to it..." - Or 2, everytime a train on the other track passed the limited express from Narita Airport. I'm not sure if I got used to the sound of another train 'hitting' our train as it passed by but if you heard that sound that came out of no where, you'd be unnerved as well.

Things We Observed in Japan - Volume I:

1. The multi-coloured roof tops of Japanese houses on the way from Narita Airport to Tokyo Central was very awesome. There's nothing wrong with a blue-roof.

2. The Japanese and their subway order. They have arrows pointing to what side you should be on when walking through the subway platforms. For instance, if you're going up the stairs, you should stay on the left. We of course, walked through people instead of with them and confused those poor Japanese greatly. "Stupid Americans!" is what I'm sure they were thinking.

3. The Japanese's insistence on staring at me because I'm brown. Beetchie thinks I may have confused them some with my asian features yet big, wavy hair. I especially didn't like that one little child who get staring at me. So he knew no better but still.  It was unnerving.

4. The toilets. The toilets had incredible flushing power which is always a concern for me. But not only that, they all have two settings for flushing! To the left for a big flush and to the right for smaller business. I always flushed to the left because of my fear of clogged toilets, even if my business was small.

5. Another toilet observation - the toilet paper's perforations are singled out at either 2 squares or 4 squares and never 1.

6. Beetchie smells like an Asian pear, which surprisingly smells just like watermelon jolly ranchers.

The Day's Eats:

We got our food ticket and paid for the meal out of a vending machine. Those things are quite popular and luckily for us they all had pictures on it so we had a fair idea of what we were in for.

I had fried pork cutlet and shrimp tempura with limitless access to rice, and miso soup.