I was sick about two weeks ago and just about everyone in my family (well, just my mom’s side) recommended that I have boiled coke with lemon to help me out. I’m not unfamiliar with this drink, I’m sure I’ve had it before when I was younger, I’m more interested at how someone managed to:
a) Boil cola to drink. That’s pretty brave of them considering how it tastes like ass when it’s flat and warm.
b) Turn it medicinal (again). I know Coke started out as a cure-all elixir, but this must have been in the late 1800s, and during the era when those drinks were all the rage (and a huge scam too). It hasn’t really been thought of a medicine since.
I tried googling this but only came across food blogs with “recipes” on boiling coke. I saw sites that gave out pretty detailed instructions on how to make this. It’s not that complicated, you don’t need a step-by-step guide, unless you’re an unsupervised child. It also seems to be an Asian thing. I never really notice the quirks in my culture until someone else points it out. While I prefer my coke ice-cold (brain-freezing temperature please), I accept that there are people who enjoy it hot. It never really was that weird to me. I figured there was a cold/hot option for every drink (and cold costing $1 more most of the time for some odd reason). This was probably the craziest idea to my Italian coworker though and when he tried it at home, he came back thinking all Chinese people were complete geniuses.
“You guys have something for everything. He taught me the Ancient Chinese cold remedy by boiling coke and I feel a lot better today than I did yesterday.”
I am currently playing in a Fall Softball league. It seemed like a good idea at the time but I’m starting to really hate it. I have a 9:30am game on Sunday, and it’s pretty damn cold out when we play. The ball we use is a soft-ish rubber ball that is a complete bitch to hit. Unless you hit the ball squarely in the middle, its going to distort and spin out, which really makes for a shitty playing experience for me. I’m not the best fielder, but I can at least say that I’m a decent hitter so it’s the one thing I look forward to in all my games. Except, I can’t really hit now either! Some horseshit going on.
Anyway…I guess all this makes what happened to me on Sunday a little funnier. We were getting slaughtered by the first team we were facing. We were down by about 10 runs in the last inning (if we were down 20 – 10, I’d be ok, because at least we were hitting, but we were down 11 – 1) and finally managed to string together a couple of hits and runs. So there I was on first base, after hitting an RBI single, and I thought if I could at least get to second base then we would have a legitimate rally going on. The next batter comes up and in my mind I’m thinking I’m going to run so fucking fast that these guys won’t have a chance to throw me out. She hits the ball and I got a wickedly fast jump on my way to second, only, the ball was hit right at the second basemen. I was DOA. There was no way I was going to be safe at all, so, without really thinking I slid foot first into second base. I was out. The batter was out too. We got doubled up. The play wasn’t even close, I was out before I even thought about sliding, but for some dumb reason I slid anyway.
As soon as I got up I immediately felt the pain. I probably scraped my knee, no big deal. It’s what happens when you slide. When I got to the bench, I noticed a big hole in my sweat pants. Through the hole, my knee looked ok, but I rolled up my pants leg anyway to see what’s up. It turns out that I was just looking at the top part of the scrape, because my whole knee was messed up. That wasn’t even the bad bit. When I got home I had to clean it because I got this when I essentially drove my knee into the dirty ground. Despite the fact that the anti-septic cream said “no burning” that shit fucking burned! When you watch Major League Baseball players slide, you’ll see them lean back a bit, so they can absorb the impact with more of their body. When you do it right, you don’t really feel it at all. Now, when I went for this slide I was running as fast as I could, so my head was down. When I went for the slide, I didn’t lean back at all, and more or less just dropped to the ground. It’s why my knee looked like someone just flayed me, and would explain why, a few hours later, I was completely crippled.
It felt like there was a ball at the top of my thigh. That’s how my friend described it when he tore his groin, and I’m more or less positive that I didn’t suffer the same fate. Although it still hurts like hell. So what’s the moral of the story? Don’t slide for a league you essentially don’t give a shit about anymore.
November 1st marks the start of National Novel Writing Month! Nanowrimo encourages you to write 50 000 words in the month of November. The purpose is to get you started on a project that you may have been working on in the hopes that you’ll be able to get it out of your system, and maybe polish it later. It’s pretty cool, except, I don’t really have something I’ve been working on. Zombie stories don’t count. Would you kill Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? What if they were zombies? It changes everything doesn’t it? The minute you start turning people into zombies, it makes it “ok” for you to kill them, which makes zombie stories an awesome way for you to vent out and maim/kill all those people you might hate in real life.
I guess as a compromise, since I don’t intend on writing for NaNoWriMo, I’ll actually start posting more on my blog. I’m actually going to do it this time around. Sorry if it gets really mundane, but I’m much better at talking about my day, and reviewing movies I’ve watched than I am at making stories out of the blue. Kudos to the people who do this for a living, you guys are all heroes.
Note: I saw this on the front page of NaNoWriMo yesterday, and thought it was an interesting question. I can’t relate to some (actually, most) of these responses, but it’s interesting to see why people write.
Unlike a good chunk of the people on that site, there’s no real higher purpose to my writing. It’s probably because I’m not at the level that they are at, or maybe I’m just doing it all wrong. I don’t write about the human condition. I also tend to avoid terms like that because it sounds more like a doctor’s diagnosis than a way to describe your experiences. I’m not sure whether I write to explore, but I do wonder aloud at what goes on in people’s minds. It should be noted that I’ve never successfully figured out what it was they were thinking and often dismiss them as being stupid. Judging by the content of my posts on here, it seems that I write a lot when I’m angry or frustrated. It helps when I’m feeling that way because barriers that some writers face are pretty much ignored when you’re too angry to be self-conscious. Maybe it’s a cathartic thing for me? Then again I’d write much more if that was the case. Sometimes I just like the way the keyboard sounds on my netbook. That quiet clicking is pretty cool. I’ve never written a story before (I have for school, but that doesn’t count) so I’ve definitely never felt that satisfaction of bringing something to life. I can’t remember ever doing well for a narrative assignment in school. Partly because I paid more attention to the word count than I did the development of the plot or character. I really didn’t care for it when I was younger.
I think it’s just something as simple as I enjoy writing. It’s fun trying to extract whatever’s in my brain and putting it onto paper. Can you imagine what it must be like for a Hollywood script writer? You think of a story, you write it out, sell the script, and then once someone starts producing the movie, you can walk on the set and shake the hand of one of your characters. That must blow your mind!
This movie is no story and all action. You can tell by the title of the movie which is essentially “Bangkok Knockout: Bangkok Knockout.” You’re not getting anything else from this movie. It’s not BKO: The Curse of the Elephant, or any of that nonsense, just plain fighting. With that being said, I’ll try and recap the plot for you (as best as I can):
Two finalists in what looks like a stunt team competition fight for the right to be in a Hollywood movie. The protagonist team wins and celebrate at a party, where they are drugged by the catering staff. They wake up in a warehouse (where all action movies eventually end up) and find that some of the members of their team have been kidnapped and a team of mysterious assassins seem to be behind this. Turns out the organizers of the competition are also a part of an underground gambling ring, and they have matched the stunt team against a group of deadly assassins! This has all been arranged so evil rich people can bet on real fights (those bloodthirsty rich people!!)
Alright, I understand how movies like this work. No need for a plot, no need for good acting (and you will get none of that in this film), everything is set up so they can give you the craziest action sequences possible (and it was crazy). The fighting is brutal in the movie. It seems like every punch and kick is prefaced with a running start because it’s all haymakers. There’s this scene where guys are fighting near a car and people are getting beat into the car. It’s as if it was made of cardboard or something. There’s a ton of people taking massive falls, through buildings, tin roofs, and off the hood of cars, you know, full of those “OH SHIT” moments that you can laugh at with your friends. Thankfully, the movie has more of this than talking.
I can’t stand this new crop of Thai action movies, particularly the ones with Tony Jaa in them, because none of their stars have any charisma. It severely limits what the movie can do, because unless you’re sitting down in awe of what he can do, you’re probably getting annoyed at his horrible acting or constant scowling. Their movies are made to be cut into Youtube clips. You can enjoy BKO, Ong Bak, and all those other movies without wasting 90 minutes of your time. Just check out the compilation videos that are inevitably going to be on Youtube, and put it on mute, unless you want to listen to Drowning Pool or something.