A tendency to disappear

The main thoroughfare which ran through the outdoor dining area of Seafood Square was a large, open-air courtyard, the type of area which Calisto's roommate Naomi Hartson would refer to as a "rapist's paradise", or a good place to get kidnapped. Densely populated, full of narrow passageways and tight corners to disappear into, it seemed to Calisto like a location for a spy movie chase scene, and was in fact adjacent to the 5th Circuit Courthouse. At any given point in the day, actual convicts, accused suspects, and law enforcement officers could be found wandering the courtyard alongside messengers (on foot or on bicycles with file envelopes tucked under their arms), business people and immigrant families (the office Calisto worked in was 2 floors below the State Immigration Office and the elevator she took to work saw enough foreigners step on and off on a daily basis to staff a UN Embassy).

Owing to the preponderance of foot traffic weaving in and out of the courtyard and the confoundingly asymmetrical layout of the courtyard itself, it was perhaps no surprise that Monte Steinhouse, a med student interning at a nearby surgical center, always seemed to appear out of nowhere. A thin wisp of a man, he had a tendency to disappear into a crowd, which made it difficult for Calisto to ever feel prepared for his sudden appearnces. He had made her acquaintance through his co-worker/erstwhile drinking buddy Eric Arnold, who was Naomi's fiancee. This introduction had led to the realization that the two of them worked in adjacent buildings. In truth, Calisto had always noticed the guy slinking around the square, and it had struck her as strange to see the man scrubs constantly smoking cigarettes by the street corner. She would have assumed that people in the healthcare industry, as a rule, live healthy lifestyles. It reminded her of vintage cigarette ads from the 1950s showing testimonials from doctors promising that this particular brand of cigarette was more beneficial to your health than any other.

Calisto couldn't say much though, since she was a prodigious smoker herself, a habit which had been exacerbated by her mother's death 6 months ago. "With Mom gone, no one is around to tell me to stop anymore," she reasoned. What was odd was that she and Monte had never shared a smoke together, until that night when Naomi and Eric introduced them. It was only legal to smoke in a handful of isolated areas of the Square, which meant that one was sure to see the same faces puffing away in their little nooks and street corners, with a rotating cast of new additions, day in and day out, often clockwork in their timing. So their paths had surely crossed any number of times during the year-and-a-half in which Calisto had been working there. In fact, her inward reaction when being introduced by her roommate had been "Oh, it's this guy." Certainly at the time she'd had no reason to believe that Monte would soon be owing her a great deal of money.

The truth was, guys like Monte had always given her the douche chills. There are certain types of people in this world that just don't commingle with us, and for Calisto he was one of them, at first. It turned out they had a great deal in common once they bothered to find out. They both had recently suffered the loss of a parent and were rebounding from the dissolution of a long-term relationship, in part because of the fallout from that loss. In retrospect she would come to believe he had zeroed in on these signifiers of vulnerability to take advantage of her, or at least she told herself when things were going badly. But although they had been through similar tragedies, they responded to them differently. Monte seemed to take it in stride and convert his experience into instant wisdom (he'd say "people die everyday, I just happened to be a acquainted with this one," as if his dad were someone from high school who he only recently reconnected with on facebook), where Calisto would question the meaninglessness of a mother being taken from her just as they were reconnecting.

Calisto's mother, in fact, turned out to be the reason she gave the money she left her to Monte in the first place. She had owned a small boutique, really a kiosk that sold dresses, while Calisto was growing up and therefore never spent much time for her daughter. But then as soon as it was time to go away to college, her mother had sold the now-profitable business to a competitor, causing no small amount of resentment on her child's part. "Oh she's too busy for me right up until it's time for me to go away, is that it?" Calisto would think to herself. With no other recourse, she turned to harder partying and neglecting her responsibilities, which led to her losing her scholarship and dropping out of college altogether.

Still, even seeing her mother in the sickbed, dying from cancer years later, she could not forget how neglected that selling of Haughty Couture had made her feel. Her mother, after all, used to refer to her business as "my baby", and in all the years she could remember, Calisto had never been referred to this affectionately. As if sensing that she had not held up her end of up the parental bargain by prioritizing her entreprenurial venture over it, she left two dying requests to her only child, which she had raised alone (however distractedly).

Promotional Materials

SEAFOOD Square is a business district in downtown Honolulu whose every component part of its moniker is a misnomer. Although a number of popular local eateries thrived in the area prior to the expansion of its boundaries in the late 90s, only an adjacent Red Lobster, which wasn't even technically part of the square proper, was known for its seafood. The remaining establishments consisted mostly of sushi restaurants (and it is possible that the conflation of sashimi and seafood, which is easy to make, was responsible for this confusion) and bar and grills existing alongside a few other national chains. Fisherman's Wharf lay about a half-minute's drive, with traffic, to the east of the Square, but unlike the Red Lobster it's proximity was never close enough to be mistaken for one of its establishments, even after the expansion. As to the "square" part of the name, the district hadn't been shaped like that since it and its adjoining properties were bought up by the Harada Homes and Offices company. Since the expansion, in fact, the shape of this area resembled more a widened diamond or a flat bicycle tire than anything so symmetrical as a square.

It is unknown why the name stuck years after it outlived its descriptiveness. Harada attempted to rechristen the zone "Oceanside Pavilion", but it never caught on except for postal purposes and colloquially it remained known as "Seafood Square". With Red Lobster long since closed down and replaced with a nightclub, the Square instead housed an unending stream of commercial properties. The businesses in these buildings and structures in the district consisted of everything from tag-team startups to the headquarters of 3 of the largest 4 banks in Hawaii. Those who appreciated the island for its natural amenities and managed to function on it without having some business to attend to in the Square shunned it. It was a blight, a sad testament to the overwhelming reach of urbanization. It was described as the "Haole-est" part of the island of Oahu (indeed, tour groups often stumbled off of cruise ships after 8-day voyages only to find themselves in the middle of the Square, which more often than not resembled the very places from which they were trying to vacation) and all day it seemed to hum with human activity.

Every day at 1:30 pm Calisto Belter sat at one of the round tables on the makai side of Seafood Square and ate something frozen from home or purchased at one of the restaurant chains. Unlike the Square, she had herself chosen the name which suited her. Born Monica Calisto Kea'auhopu Belter in the summer of 1987, her parents had named her for each one of her grandparents. She had to ditch Monica (which she never liked anyway) after the name had first been hijacked by a Courtney Cox character on primetime network TV, then by a presidential scandal which had embarrassed everybody. She never connected with Kea'auhopu, the maternal grandfather she never knew, and the name Belter had always just been a family name which reminded her of boxing. But when as a little girl she discovered that Calisto derived from the myth of a Greek goddess who transforms into a bear, she related. There was always something secretive and less-than-human about her, she thought.

Bondage

Wendy and I decided to see every Bond film after watching and really liking Skyfall (which, as kt turns out, is easily the best one). A bunch of them were briefly on Netflix last month and these are the ones we managed to watch together:

Dr. No - Big screen debut, 1962. All the elements are already in place (the gambling, the martini, the girls, the last-name-first introduction, the exotic locations, the grandiose villain with unfortunate racist overtones) but it doesn't feel much like a Bond film. Mainly the problem is with the pacing. It unfolds more like a procedural mystery thriller than like a modern-day action thriller. And the climax is hilariously anti-climactic. An unassuming little film, overall. Certainly nothing in it to suggest they would go on to make 23 MORE OF THESE WHAAAAT?
Goldfinger - this is more like it. This time everything is bigger, the villain is more memorable, the action set pieces more elaborate, and the woman is somehow named Pussy Galore, which is filthier than any porn star name I've ever heard. If Dr. No established the basic template, this film is the one that established most of the cliches that every subsequent 007 film copied. It is all totally ridiculous, of course, but its also ridiculously enjoyable fun - everything you expect a Bond film to be.
Thunderball - not quite a retread of Goldfinger (the climax to that one was a big battle between U.S. Army soldiers and evil Asians; this one basically moves the same battle sequence underwater) but aside from a supercool opening in which Bond beats the crap out of a guy disguised as his own grieving widow and than escapes on a jet pack, doesn't quite do enough to distinguish itself. Feels like the series is already spoofing itself a little, too.
You Only Live Twice - holy crap, this one has an army of ninjas in it, and they're the good guys! That qualifies as progressive for this series. Excellent Nancy Sinatra theme too (later sampled by Robbie Williams in the song "Millenium"). Aside from that and a classic villain played by Donald Pleasance (who Dr. Evil was later based on) this one overall is pretty poor.
Live And Let Die - The best Bond theme ever is wasted on one of the worst Bond films ever. The low point of this whole series is an endless boat chase that inexplicably introduces a small-town hick sheriff for comic relief and then abruptly makes him the protagonist. Some of the worst comic relief ever. Still, a pre-Alien Yaphet Kotto makes a badass villain and, that song.
The Spy Who Loved Me - the twist in this one is Bond teams up with a Russian spy chick to take down the bad guys. She makes a good foil and the Egyptian desert locations give the movie a nice Lawrence of Arabia/Indiana Jones feel. Plus, Jaws. This one is solid all around.
Licence To Kill (sic) - they tried to do a darker, grittier Bond and the result was so poorly-received that it killed off the franchise for six years (prior to this, they released at least one 007 every 2 years, a staggering rate of production). Too bad, cause this one is awesome. Sure, it feels more like Scarface or Miami Vice than your fathers Bond, but Timothy Dalton kicks a lot of ass as a less tongue-in-cheek version of the character and young Benicio Del Toro steals every scene he's in. The twist in this one is Bond goes rogue and goes after some drug dealers after they kill his friends wife and feed his leg to a shark. it's fun to see him somewhat humanized for a change. Guess the world wasn't ready.
Octopussy - Roger Moore already looks old enough to play M. it felt like they were aiming the movies at a younger audience by this point. At least, that seems to explain all of the circus stuff. Not that it's a bad thing - it still delivers all the expected Bond action. I guess I have no strong feelings about this one. It was alright.

Still a bunch I need to see - The Living Daylights, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Moonraker, Casino Royale. Or maybe just not bother. There is no reason to see more than 2 of these films, unless you have an inexplicable soft spot for the character. Which I guess I do.

UPDATE 7/27/2015 Have now also seen these:
  From Russia With Love - Badass, the least campiest of the early Bonds. Why they didn't stick with this slow-burn/Hitchcockian direction instead of going full cheese with Goldfinger a year later, I'll never understand or forgive.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service - Boring. I gave up an hour in. Lazenby sucks!
Diamonds Are Forever - Godawful. The worst. Way more embarrassing than the Roger Moores or Pierce Brosnans because they really should've known better.
The Man With The Golden Gun - Christopher Lee, yay. Everything else, boo. Has way more in common with The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies than a Bond film ever should. Who the fu ck thought it was a good idea to bring back Sheriff Barney Gomer Pyle??? Boyyeee, I tell ya.
Moonraker - Actually not bad, cheap pasted-on laser effects and sillyass Jaws romance aside. Goodhead? Goddamn right.
For Your Eyes Only - Is this the one with the sequence where Bond outruns these guys on motorcycles/snowmobiles by skiing downhill away from them (that Christopher Nolan ripped off for Inception)? I HATE THIS ONE
The Living Daylights - Good, if a little too "generic Roger Moore-era" Bond. Ok, it's kinda boring in spots, but come on, skiing downhill in a cello case? Ripping off the climax to The Man Who Knew Too Much? Being directed by that old astronaut guy who walked on the moon at age 80 (not really)?
Goldeneye - Trying to modern-update and retro the franchise at the same time? Whatever, Damn Judi Dench. Famke Janssen will always be the hottest, though.
Die Another Day - Has exactly one good virtue -- starting with Bond imprisoned for 30 years on a remote island and forced to stage a one-man production of Robinson Crusoe for his captor's amusement. Should've left the movie there.
Casino Royale - OVERRATED ALERT OVERRATED ALERT Ok fine, it kicked new life into the franchise or whatever, but why? Why exactly? Naked cock-and-ball torture? ESPN World Series of Poker? Blondeness? Parkour? It's going to age badly, is what I'm saying. Good sequences, though. Good direction. Understandable. But ultimately it's all just leadup.
Quantum Of Solace - UNDERRATED ALERT Nah not really. Kinda deserves its reputation as the black sheep of the modern day era. But it's still not as awful as everyone wants it to be. Except for the "Goldfinger" ripoff black oil killing. That part is pure cringe. It's just disjointed, incoherent. Isolated good scenes that don't amount to much.
Skyfall - The best. Finally, they got it right. Turns out all they needed to do was tell an actual STORY about the CHARACTERS. Who knew?

Breaking dawn + reflection part 2

The supposed big "triumph" of the series for Bella occurs when she is able to use her power to shield everybody on their side, not that she even needed to, but she does. Ok, so the volturi gathered an army to take out the Cullen's because they made a new vampire baby. For hundreds of years, it was presumed impossible for a vampire and a human to reproduce, the reason given is that when you become a vampire, your body stops changing, so women stop getting their periods. Yet somehow, Edward is still able to produce viable sperm. I'm going to assume stephenie Meyer failed 7th grade health class. So I guess it's ok to make new vampires but not if they are children. The lover of one of the vampires they killed in the last boom gets a look at Bella and renesmee and zips off to snitch on them. As usual, people act on assumptions in this story and no one ever gets a chance to explain, which is just bad plotting and stupid motivation.

At last, Alice, Bella's sister in law who had left without explanation earlier in the book, returns with the members of a Brazilian family who Bella and Edward encountered on their honeymoon, as living proof that other vampire-human hybrids exist. This defuses the entire conflict and everybody goes home without suffering any casualties. Anticlimactic, sure, but at this point you'd be foolish to expect any kind of satisfying resolution. Predictably, Jacob imprints on renesmee, thereby resolving the love triangle that wasn't. With a hint of furthering the story somewhere in the future, this heinous shit is over. Here are some notes about the series as a whole:

- getting back to what I started complaining about earlier: the biggest problem with this series is that none of the characters have any sort of existence that doesn't revolve around serving the protagonist. Alice is a perfect example -- when the plot is not requiring her to use her iffy psychic powers, all she ever does is go on shopping sprees for Bella and execute elaborate plans for her prom and wedding. Are we ever given a real reason why she should care so much? Of course not. Even the characters that dislike Bella are given only the defining character trait of "doesn't like Bella." One way or another, she's the center of the universe at all times. This ties right into my theory that these books are pitched directly at girls who hate themselves.

- how much do I regret reading these books? There were a few moments that didn't absolutely make me curse my own literacy. The sections from Jacobs pov are at least not from Bella's, though still not good. The parts dealing with sex were hilarious in a bad way. Any part where Bella was in physical pain felt sweetly cathartic. But other than that, I'm hard-pressed to come up with anything positive to say about any of these books. They are empty stories full of bad prose and nothing else.

- I remain solidly on Team Jacob, not just because he has the coolest name ever. Edward is just way too much of a doormat to Bella and a boring person with no interests other than his girlfriend. In real life, girls hate guys like that. At least Jacob has a life outside of inexplicably crushing on the least desirable protagonist ever put on paper. Plus, I bet he could kick Edwards ass.

- why did I read this again? Obviously, so I could blog about it. But really, I just run low on interests sometimes and give in to ill-conceived impulses. Hopefully it doesn't happen again.

- overall, my biggest complain about these books is the lack of a scene where Jacob attempts to seduce Bella by singing a rendition of "hungry like the wolf". What the hell, stephenie Meyer?

- stephenie Meyer is a Mormon, and a strange, strange woman if her writing is any indication. Se is terrified of sex but wallows in romance to a sickening degree. She demonstrates no understanding of pacing or plotting or character development. She cribs ideas liberally from Marvel comics. And she is the best-selling author of all time, in spite of it all. My hat is off.

Now, who wants to see me read Fifty Shades of Grey?

Breaking dawn + reflection

This will be a multi-part post because im writing it on an ipad, which is a stupid machine that limits how long your posts can be.
The asinine final chapter of twilight concerns the birth of Edward and Bella's child, an ultimate showdown of vampires that amounts to nothing, and way too much stupid description about Bella becoming a vampire. I'm gonna blow through the plot here so's I can commence to bitching about the book sooner.
There's a wedding, blah blah blah, they go to brazil for their honeymoon and Bella gets knocked up right away. The way this book deals with sex is one of the most laughable things about it. The morning after their wedding night, Bella wakes up and finds herself covered in feathers because Edward had to bite the pillow to keep from totally destroying Bella's vagina. First of all, wow, real subtle there. Second, it is obvious to me that stephenie meyer is not at all familiar with the term "pillow biter" or it's attendant connotations. If you are unfamiliar, go watch waiting for Guffman, or just think about it logically for two seconds. It's hilarious, that you would spend three books building this man up as the most amazing specimen of masculinity, then as soon as he hits the sheets you unintentionally tag him with the derisive term for a gay bottom. And yes, i have now taken to referring to stephenie meyer in the second person. That is how damaging these books have been to my world.
As far as I can tell, Edward and Bella manage to have sex exactly twice before her pregnancy starts causing such horrific complications she needs to be bedridden. See, after the first time, Edward has all the pangs of guilt over it because... She had bruises on her thighs afterward. Yeah. Apparently during his 150 years on earth, nobody ever told him there are other positions than just pounding away at some chicks open legs. Also, bruises means you got off easy, sweetheart. So anyway, the pregnancy absolutely rips Bella a new one. She can't keep anything down, the baby kicks her so hard it breaks her ribs, etc. this part of the book is actually kinda fun, seeing Bella finally, finally suffer as bad as she has deserved to all this time. Unfortunately, we are cheated out of experiencing it through her pov because the narration abruptly shifts to Jacob at this point, for no reason. Hey, I'll take any respite from the tortured prose of Bellas pov, but you'd think the one time it'd be important to be in the characters head is during the most horrendously painful experience of her life. But that's stephenie Meyer for you, the woman who has deomnstrated over and over that she doesn't understand how literature works.
So after something like 2 months of pregnancy, the baby comes, snaps her spine in half, and Edward has no choice but to turn her into a vampire. Obviously he'd wanted to all this time because everyone was afraid the baby would kill her, but she refused. Ok, we all know it's good to respect your wife's wishes, but this is a person who openly acknowledges she doesn't know what's good for her. Sometimes you have to grow a pair and do what somebody doesn't want you to do. This gets at the heart of what is most fundamentally wrong with this whole series, which I'll return to later. She miraculously survives through some combination of vampire venom and morphine, but not before experiencing the most incredible pain imaginable. Then boom, she's a vampire.
A whole lot of nothing happens between the baby's birth and the ostensible climax of the series. But before I get to that, let me just point out that she names the baby reneesme. Bellas mom is Renee, Edwards adoptive vampire mom is esme. If you had a friend who did that, you would never stop making fun of them. But since this is Bella, everyone acts like its no big deal. So during the early stages of her vampirism, everybody is totally interested in what her vampire power would. And Bella is so pathetic that when no extraordinary power is apparent, people start assuming her power is that she's ale to control herself from not biting humans... Better? Than other newborn vampires. I'll just skip to the end and tell you her power turns out to be creating a psychic "shield" that can protect herself and others from other vampire powers, kind of like Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four, or the daughter from the Incredibles if youre too young to know what that is.

(continued in part 2)

My faults

This isn't a complete list. These are just the ones that reoccur most frequently, and with a vengeance.

I can't trust anyone.

If it came down to the choice between truly putting my trust in a person, and being left alone, I'd choose being alone every time. And it's not that I believe everyone is evil and out to get me with malicious intent. It's just my belief that anybody who truly knows me, who has had a glimpse into the core of who I am as a person, would simply choose not to be around me. I use pre-emptive rejection as a weapon against the possibility that I will be rejected. I would rather lose the connection with another person on my own terms than lose it because someone of their own free will decided it wasn't worth the effort. I list this first because it is at the root of almost everything else that's wrong with me. It's why I'm dishonest, it's why I can't make or keep friends, it's the reason I suspect everybody else's motives, it's what makes me afraid of losing the love of everyone who loves me, and on and on and on.

I have a bad temper.

When I was a child, my two older brothers used to try to get me mad. Then they would laugh at my anger and call me "temper boy, temper boy". That boy never fully went away. I just got better at suppressing him. I used to have these weird explosions of anger, usually resulting in self-directed (or property-directed) violence. I used to punch myself in the head as hard as I could, several times at a go. I've banged my head against more things than I can recall. My parents had a stairway at their old house that I used to throw myself down. One time I ran down my street and tackled a garbage can, linebacker-style. Another time my car ran out of gas and I punched the steering wheel so hard the horn got stuck and went "ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHNNNNN" for several minutes until a nice guy (and total stranger) living on the block came out and cut it off for me, before driving me to the gas station and filling my tank up for me. I've gotten better over the years at not taking my anger out on things, but sometimes the boy comes back and whenever it does, it's still as powerful as ever. I feel totally out of control, even if I manage not to destroy or injure anything. I'm starting to realize it'll never go away, it's just this beast I carry inside me forever. Maybe this explains why the Hulk was my favorite superhero when I was a little kid.

I focus on the negative side of everything.

Which is obvious to everybody who knows me (see fault #1). On the one hand, this can be a useful analytical skill. But when applied to one's own life, it's nothing but a bludgeon.

This isn't all, but I don't really care about the others. These seem to be the most significant, the ones I can see causing serious problems down the line. I have to figure out a way to keep these tendencies in check, or they will mess with my life. Anyway I'm working on it. I know awareness isn't the same thing as improvement, but it's a start, right?

Goodbye ain't

From this day forward, effectively immediately (or whenever I start feeling like it), I am hereby removing the word "ain't" from my vocabulary. It's going to be difficult to let go of, since I love saying it so much, but my wife asked me nicely to stop saying it and so I had to acquiesce, mainly because I couldn't come up with a compelling reason why I should keep saying it. I don't know whether she's opposed to the word on principle or if she just doesn't like it when I say it. She said to me "You're not Huckleberry Finn", and I just can't argue with that point.

So goodbye, ain't. You were fun and ungrammatical. It's going to be hard singing along to every pop song that I love and having to correct the lyrics, but it is a necessary commitment.