Illogical Logic

Do you know what I hate?

Illogical logic.

So… how's your week going?

Mine's mostly meh, but it's because it's neither good nor bad.

Although my son may not be playing soccer this year, owing to baseball commitments, I will once again help out with a soccer team as an assistant coach in an effort to even out the nice left-arm of the sunglasses tan I have on my face right now thanks to a mere 40 minutes out at a local batting cage this past weekend.

I can only imagine what some of you folks with a pale complexion, like my wife, must be dealing with.

But it's not all rosy me.

For those of you who know or maybe even care, I spend most of my creative writing time putting out a daily blog called "Japan—It's A Wonderful Rife" for… hmm… coming up to the five year anniversary in a few months time.

It was originally done to be a somewhat chronological diary that would showcase the 88 or so comedic columns I wrote about my three-year stay in Japan between 1990-1993 while a junior high school English teacher on the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Programme.

I actually open the blog with the weird statement: "I didn't want to go to Japan. To be perfectly frank, I was just trying to get laid."

I explain how I was a near-26-year-old virgin that had never left home before despite seven years of post-secondary education, and that I rarely had a woman smile at me (still a concern as the years go by), nor had any knowledge of how to look after myself as I had never cooked, cleaned, done laundry or gone shopping before… I might have gone shopping once or twice with the boys in preparation of a camping trip. I'm pretty sure a couple of women somewhere have smiled at me as I walked away.

By the way… you know how they say that every camping trip always has one guy who snores like a jet plane with asthma? Don't you believe it! And while I won't speak for my fellow happy campers, I've always had a nice, peaceful sleep.

You see… that's the sort of self-deprecating humor I use.

Right from day one, I utilize that same style of "let's poke fun of others" but "make sure you poke fun at yourself" kind of writing. The point that is evident to people with a sense of humor and a functional brain is that everyone is the same, but different.

In Japan, I did learn how to do all the little things, as I suppose I learned them all through osmosis by watching my parents all those years... and despite trial and error, I did learn how to grow up and as a child of the 1960s am still learning how to grow up on a daily basis.

I don't think the Japanese people are any different than anyone else… they live, love, laugh, hate, work, have family, eat, play, have sex and die - hopefully not in that order. Yeah, politics and religion and other crap is part of the equation, but all in all, aside from different circumstances, they are the same as everyone else.

It's that attitude that made surviving Japan a pretty simple experience for me - regardless of how frustratingly difficult or easy or was on a daily basis.

Anyhow… I'm not sure when or why I decided to deviate from merely writing out the funny stuff about Japan to offer news or features or essays or opinion pieces on everything from art, social stuff, history, geography, religion, war, to the sights, the sounds, the smells of Japan, but I also decided to offer up my daily diary… which can get downright sexy, and thus increasingly nauseating for those of you with more puritanical tastes than myself.

It's all pretty funny.

It's about MY evolution… as a person… where yeah, I come off looking and sounding like a complete egotistical ass clown, because in hindsight, that's how I see myself 20 years removed… but of course, back then, everyone else was wrong and I was right.

I make no apologies for my past life's ass-ness. I admit it. I see it. I don't revel in it, and if it appears as though I do, you can be pretty damn sure it's me and my sense of humor.

Apparently I have one. I have proof!

When I left EB Games (a video game store chain store) at Sherway Gardens in Toronto yesterday with my son, the clerk thanked me for the laughs… you know, because I actually talked to him as a person - something I actually do quite often at places I walk into…. it's why any store I frequent more than once - they know who I am... and even if it's not true, it sure seems like I get that special service that makes me feel special. (I like to believe that the folks I deal with are actually nice staff, and treat everyone that way whether they deserve it or not.)

Anyhow… here's a poor segue... I sometimes put out these blogs that deal with sex.

I try to be fair and present the facts or the fallacies and when I say I don't know something, I'm pretty straightforward about it, but since this is also MY blog, if I say something, it's because that is what I know… though I will preface it by stating it's not necessarily the gospel truth, just the facts as I know them to be.

I have often gone through multiple, multiple sources of information, each one conflicting the other in an effort to provide a one-stop-shop of factual information… I've spent 20 hours researching some of these blogs, and almost as long writing one or two of them, just because I want to give my best effort with the best information possible.

If you care to read it, I care to provide good, honest information.

So I wrote an article entitled: Why Japanese Women Like Gaijin (Foreign) Men, sort of as a companion piece as to why Japanese Men Like Gaijin Women.

I explained the pro's and con's to the best of my ability.

I am extremely self-deprecating in this article:

"I did okay considering my fair to middling looks... and yet, of all those opportunities, only once did I ask a woman out.

Every other time... I was asked out by the women. Both gaijin and Japanese women."

Or, how about this one:

"I thought - for the first time in my life - that I was hot sh!t. Of course... by the time I got to Japan at the age of 25, I was still a virgin. So, hot or not, I still had that problem filling me with self-doubt every time I looked at a woman."

And so…  I always find it amusing when I get hate mail accusing me of being a sex addict or disgusting misogynist pervert.

Here's such a comment that I received on Monday, May 26, 2014. I'll leave the typos in, because fug… typos are typos… everyone makes them.

"An intersting testimony, but the way you speak about yourself is disgusting.
A kind of overconfident sex addicted. After having watched a few Bollywood film, i think it's a comon for people of your ethnicity. Males chauvinis thinking to be wonderful. I see it with people from India being financialy succesful in the US. Such arrogant and unfriendly people.
Neverless looking to the scholl programms in the USA and Canda compared to Europe you are all under educated."

So… the story I wrote is interesting, but apparently because I am perceived to be someone who can easily talk about sex and enjoys sex, I am disgusting, which helps explain why over 1-billion people from India are arrogant and unfriendly.

I love stuff like this…

Okay… I can't resist. TYpos:

• 'intersting' should be 'interesting';
• 'comon' should be 'common';
• 'chauvinis' should be 'chauvinist';
• 'financialy' should be 'financially';
• 'sucessful' should be 'successful';
• 'Neverless' should be 'Nevertheless';
• 'scholl' should be 'school';
• 'programms' should be 'programs' or 'programmes';
• 'Canda' should be 'Canada'.

Not bad… only nine typos, which I hope are typos, otherwise our scholl system am in dyer straights.

Well... maybe not Canada's. Every kid is forced to be able to read the back and understand the back of a hockey card by the time they are 24-months-old. 

So… should I be concerned about this Anonymous commentator's racist comments and generalizations?

No, not really… it's a free country… or at least I assume he or she is from a 'free-country'… and everyone is entitled to their opinion and everyone's opinion is correct, even if they aren't correct. That's why they are called opinions and not unadulterated facts.

Do you think the person writing in realized they were racist by damning all people from India as arrogant and unfriendly merely because that's what he or she has come up against in their daily life of watching Indian Bollywood movies?

Why watch a Bollywood movie if they hate Indians? Well, because he or she doesn't hate Indians… he or she just finds them arrogant and unfriendly.


Dude or Dudette, you should know that Indians often describe themselves as the most racist people on the planet, as they seem to hate everyone or dislike everyone who isn't of their caste or religion or from their province.

Maybe that's true, but maybe it's not. One person said that - my father did a long time ago, and I doubt he would own up to saying something like that now, but I've never taken it as the one and only truth.

To be fair, I've met a lot of arrogant and unfriendly people from a lot of countries, including: Russians, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, England, Italy, Croats, Serbia, Bosnia, Mexico, Philippines (actually, not from there), Germans (actually, not from here either)… but you get the idea… there are idiots everywhere… both arrogant and unfriendly, but I've also met so many other people from those countries and more where it's the exact opposite.

I might sometimes come across as being arrogant and unfriendly, but that might be because of a certain circumstance… but that's not who I am.

And to say that you have formed an opinion of an entire race of people from a country - these brown Caucasians - just because you've watched a few crappy movies, is quite hilarious to me.

Perhaps we should use the American media view of Indians whereby we are all clerks at a convenience store (like Apu on The Simpsons), or brainiac nerds like Raj on The Big Bang Theory, which of course doesn't explain why there are these other three brainiac white nerds on that show, if we must talk about color.

Or maybe that guy who played Kumar in those awful, but still funny Harold and Kumar flicks, or maybe that Bug guy on Crossing Jordan. 

Or, maybe we talk about all of the white guys who play Indian dudes in movies… like Ben Kingsley as Ghandi or that dude in Short Circuit? Yeah, I know that somewhere in his past Kingsley has some Indian blood - probably that's why he's arrogant and unfriendly.

One of my best bud's is a white guy who drives a taxi… not an arrogant and unfriendly brown guy. Who knew that there were white taxi drivers? Stereotype! Thank god, he's not brown... we wouldn't want the smell of curry from some rag head to upset people's delicate constitutions as they are being shuttled drunk from one bar to the next.

Regarding the commentator... he or she sees arrogance and unfriendliness from successful Indians in the U.S. Man or Woman... stop hanging out at those places. If you are talking about people you work with, well, not being an overly successful brown guy living in Canda, I'll defer to your knowledge on such topics.

But come on.. just because you are either too lazy or too ignorant to understand the nuances of the written English word as presented in my blogs, it's no reason to denounce an entire race anonymously.

Look… have an opinion, all you like… you'll note I haven't removed it from the blog. I don't give a sh!t.

Keep the language clean, but it would be nice if you could actually comment about the points in the article, maybe WHY you were looking for this topic (you don't just accidentally find this topic via Google, unless directed here by some other strange blog or website - and then... why would you want to read it, especially if it's being written by a guy you think is Indian. I'm Canadian, chickie-poo. Perhaps you should slam all Canadians, because my social upbringing was formed in Canda! Wahoo! Everybody get cancer and smoke weed! Yeah! Every night is hockey night! We love the fact that we get more snow in Toronto than in Buffalo and Minneapolis! We love the fact that women in Toronto are legally allowed to go topless!!! Yeah - healthcare that doesn't bankrupt people, because we put people before dollars! Yeah, let's go burn down the White House again like we did 200 years ago! Crap... can we have our Stanley Cup back, because nothing says hockey better than a team from Los Angeles winning it. Anaheim, not excepted. Wahoo! Canadians!)… but unless you want to sign your real name - and why wouldn't you? What have you got to be afraid of? - please keep your racist comments and thoughts to yourself.

Do you know what I hate?

Illogical logic.