The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

Jim Thompson, �Heed the Thunder�

Forgot to mention this in the last entry as I spent 23 hours working in some form or another, but I had another piece published at the Honolulu Weekly.

And tonight I wrote another piece for a news organization. Well, I suppose I should say �News� organization, as it was a letter to the Fox network. Normally I wouldn�t bother with hate mail, but after seeing Bill O�Reilly on The Daily Show tonight, I couldn�t help myself. The show wasn�t even finished when I pounded this out and sent it to the O�Reilly Factor.

Bill, I watch your show along with The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for similar reasons � The comedic value. Watching you on the Oct. 18 episode of the latter program, as you tried and failed to shout your way out of uncomfortable questions, brought sheer elation to my entire household.

Thank you, Mr. O�Reilly, for making us laugh about life. Again. Can�t wait for the next book, and by that I mean Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting�s expose on the inaccuracies of your program titled, �The Oh Really? Factor.�

Feel free to insert a meaningless disparaging comment against my person at this point.

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Last entry I also said I�d try to talk about the book, or Hawaii, or both.

So.

This is Jim Thompson�s second novel. It�s not very engaging and doesn�t hold up well in modern times even as a window to a time when things were more Willa Catheter-ish.

Not that that means anything, I just wanted to say Willa Catheter.

Fuck the book. Hawaii. �Cause you know, I live there.

Whoopie.

I think the only way I can approach this is to use an example from the mosquito trapped in my house the other night. Mosquitoes haven�t really been a problem so far as I�m far enough away from the mountains and the Lesbian is scared of all things with more than two appendages below the abdomen and thus douses the apartment constantly with millions of pesticides.

Anyway. Back to the mosquito. One managed to get into the house and bit me. I saw it later, taking a double dose on my leg. I swatted and missed. Not more than five minutes later I felt the pinch again. Despite that the little bastard had now swelled to at least twice her size and was barely able to stay aloft, I missed once again.

It didn�t matter. The house was sealed up and I knew he wasn�t going anywhere. But instead of being smart and hiding close to a door waiting for an escape route to open, she just got greedy.

�Well,� thinks the mosquito (I�m assuming here, obviously), �it looks like I can�t get out. Rather than working on a plan to free myself from the confines of this apartment, I may as well go for another dip on this guy�s leg and when I eventually get back home I won�t have to go hunting for another month.�

Yeah, except for the fact that she gorged himself more than I can at a Hometown Buffet and was now so bloated and slow that I was able to catch and kill her in a slow motion, clumsily-executed recreation of the Mr. Miyagi scene with the fly. Except I used my fat Hometown Buffet-fed fingers instead of chopsticks, blood splattering like I was clenching prime rib between my index finger and thumb.

That�s the perfect analogy for my life. Somebody pinch me.

See, yes, I�m in Hawaii. But I�ve also been spending so much time running around from job, to job, to job, to job, and school in-between all of these fucking jobs that it�s sometimes hard for me to remember that. I�ll be riding along on my bike, smoking and cursing as I maneuver past the traffic when I look up and see the clouds form as separate dynamic pictorial imagery instead of the afterthought they usually serve as in California. Then I notice the trees and the flowers and the sunshine and the girls wearing practically nothing...

OK, I haven�t been so busy as to not notice the girls.

But I have been so busy with school and work and checking up on my suicidal father that I really haven�t had time to do anything that truly screams out, �Dude! You�re in Hawaii!� I mean, I�ve been here just over two months, and I�ve been in the ocean once. On the rare occasions that I have free time I�ve thought about things to do and places to go, like that mosquito. I even have the opposable thumbs to make it happen. But then I think about the realities, like having no money and no friends, and the fact that when I return it would be unlikely I could find a place to park, so I settle in for another bite of playstation games and bad reality television.

Part of that is sheer laziness. Another part is due to the realities of my surroundings and the financial hardships. A lot of people helped with that, and should be thanked. My mom and dad have both been supportive, both financially and emotionally.

Eric and Cynthia, my old bosses at the bookstore in California, magnanimously shipped lots of my personal belongings to me at their own expense after I ran out of both time and money. Others, like Julia, Siona, Mary, and Mrs. Happy sent beer money. Some of it I even spent on beer. Erin and Sara sent me a carton of cigarettes and money with instructions to spend it on booze. Kelly sent stuff I left behind at her own expense. Danny sent merchandise from his employer for my own personal gain, which was both incredibly friendly and subversive. Wilgefortis even donated a bed, so I�m no longer sleeping on a borrowed half-inflated air mattress built for a midget.

Even with all this support, however, it�s been rough. I have bills. I have debt. I was slowly whittling that down in San Jose, but I�m now back deep into the hole and maybe worse off than I was before. I try not to get stressed out about these things but it�s almost impossible to avoid when I can�t see a foreseeable �out� from the hole I dug for myself.

Take my car, which I decided to ship over to the island since I knew I would need some sort of transportation to cover stories. I thought the car ran well when I shipped it, but in re-registering the vehicle and paying for various little things that needed to get fixed before it passed Hawaii�s Safety Inspection, I�ve spent nearly half the amount that it cost to put it on a boat to get here. That amount is not small.

That�s not the worst part of it all, though. No, that comes when I realize after working three jobs in one day totaling more than 15 hours, I made less than I would have in one shift at the bookstore, which I loved working for.

And so, I decided. Come November, I�m coming home.

Oooh, I totally got you! But yes, I�m coming home for one week. I�m going to the benefit dinner, but I will be in San Jose on Wednesday, November 16, to reclaim my role as DJ at the Cinebar for Punk Night.

Yes, I�m bringing records. Come and buy me a drink. Lord knows I can�t afford any myself. I�m just hoping the bookstore will let me work that same day to make up for all the other jobs I�m skipping out of to go to this.