Taste · the · Bass · with · host · Su* · \0. · Tanaka

One day a short time I went scavenging around the Fort. I found many wonderful items. Here is a list of them.

• A mangled toy elephant.


• An IBM computer case. Complete with motherboard. And power supply. Nothing else.


• An elderly man who had misplaced something very important on the top of his car it would seem. He was examining it precisely. I did not get to take this home. A pity.


• A brand new battery in working condition.


• A quarter. Quarters are the best.

I came home with the small items stashed inside of the computer case. My mother took a dim view of this.

"Why do you bring this here," she said.

"I am going to use it at some point I expect because by God I am Rube Goldberg," I said.

My mother is not stupid. She immediately recognized me as Suuji Tanaka to the exclusion of Rube Goldberg. I can not believe I thought my little ruse would work.

My mother chose not to pursue the matter further because she knows that I am a deeply silly person. I took the items to my room and used them to decorate a bench. The bench is convinced it is a night-stand, so this is OK.

I was still in the mood for Activities so I decided to check the mail. Consideration revealed to me that checking the mail is not an Activity, rather it is an hnnnnm. activity., so I had to think of a way to make it interesting.

The result of the two minutes of research and development is a fabulous new kind of checking the mail. I will reveal it here because I trust my friends to respect my intellectual property.

Here it is.

It is like checking the mail, with the exception:

You wear sunglasses and you attempt to bounce an ice cube down the street. When that does not work you -- this part is inspired by Tony's effective method for dealing with problems -- make up a small tune about bouncing ice. As in ice of a bouncing-inclined variety.

I had a good day and I reccommend the technique to all persons over the age of fifteen.

If you do not want to read this, then that is fine and I am not offended.

Some days ago I went to the arcade with my friends Tony and Camille. This was most probably an unwise decision but we did it anyway and nobody died*.

Tony immediately brought disgrace on us all by feeding a 20 bill in to the change machine. Quarters are nice, but I am strongly against trying to carry such many of them.

"Ghhaaaaaahhh," explained Tony. "I thought I was putting in a 5," he lied.

Tony played a game called "POLICE 911." This game uses a movement sensor to allow the player to dodhe bullets which travel at about a quarter of a mile per day, until they get bored, and then they travel at a quarter of a mile per CPU cycle. Tony played as a light gun toting police man who's job it is to take down about three hundred and ninety five angry Koreans and yakuza. I made mock protest about the depiction of Asians as shirtless folk with dragon tattoos who can't be trusted to enter a warehouse without hiding in boxes and shooting at the police. Camille was of the opinion that Tony playing this game was. THE single most funny thing since the Viet Nam War.

"ACH, AYE," Tony expounded, whirling around madly as he dodged SMG fire. "I AM BILLY DAN BILL, THE LITTLEST OCEAN PERCH. OH! OH! DID YOU JUST SHOOT AT ME?!? OH NO YOU DIDN'T! OH NO YOU DIDN'T EVEN, YOUNG MAN!"

"Oh," said Camille. "Oh this is--HA HA DID YOU SAY OCEAN PERCH? OH GOD!"

"And what about that. That guy didn't even aim," I complained. "People will think Asians don't aim."

---

*Based on current reports.

Tony is at my house. He ate lunch here. Diminutive pizzas were lunch. He suggests that I may have just misspelled "kawaii pizzas-chan" but I disagree.

Why is he still at my house? I gave him food. Is this not enough?

Now he is telling me about a dream he had in which he bought a blocky V shaped electric guitar at Hastings for seven dollars. The guitar had a slot for what he calls a "color correction card" and a slider on which there were positions such as "CMYK", "EGA", and "CABLE MODEM."

He is still here.

He is touching my bass.

Oh my God the man is touching my bass.

Now he's playing something. I think it's a Talking Heads song (Talking Heads is his most recent unhealthy fixation).

Oh dear, he's singing. I love it when he sings, but he's in my house. What does he want from me? Is this some subtle way of asking for something?



That's what he's singing. I like it. The last three lines are some what obtuse and artsy for my tastes though.




I think he's trying to blend two songs together. It isn't going well, and it's making the springs in my bed become crooked.



That little travesty just killed a pixel on my laptop screen. It's stuck yellow now. Curses, how unfortunate.

I think he's trying to make me go insane.

He's trying to make me more like Them.

He has this array of crazy friends who I believe were normal up standing citizens until he drove them into the deep end.

He certainly can sing, though.

Tony is in my house, playing bass, serving no real purpose, and trying to make me lose my grip on my mind.

The reader may be convinced that this is a situation with which I am unhappy. Quite the opposite is true. This is exactly what I keep him around for.

Today I was in the woods near the campgrounds. I kneeled to examine a cable which was protruding from the dirt. It appeared to be cable tv type co axial cable. I made a mental note to ask Tony to bring a signal analyzer out to it some time to see if these campgrounds get HBO and Cinemax.

When I stood up, I did not know where I was. The place I was in was not the place in which I had kneeled to examine a cable. I am sure of it. Indubitably the universe was (to use a word I learned on watching B.E.T.) met'lin.

"Why you be met'lin?", I shouted to the skies. They turned a dead ear to my cries of anger. The skies are unforgivingly cruel. Sometimes they drop water and shit on me.

How I returned to the safety of the blue beanbag chair in my bedroom I can not say. But the reader can be secure in the knowledge that my miraculous self-rescue involved quarters. Quarters are dead useful.