Cesspool Shithead

Look at what the scumbag did. This scumbag that lives in the corner of our building over the cesspool, that cesspool that blew up last year because the superstitious schmuck wouldn't let the workmen empty it. He called some fuck face sewer rats to cover the holes that would clean the shit from under his useless garage after the community board agreed to spend plenty money remedying the problem he caused a few years ago. This is Taiwan. No law that can't be broken. Let's hope this shithead gets a heart attack and cleanses our building of his putrid presence.   

These asshole workmen won't get paid by the building and won't be paid by shit head. In other words, they're assholes. But not to worry. The boss will simply not pay the workers and run away with any money he has left. Fucking stupid workmen! Let the all die in a pool of shit. 

Leona had  no choice but to call the cops and file a report of these fuck offs that thought the three holes to relieve the sewer pressure was ruining their health., What fuck off schmucks! But they gave my wife extra work having to sue them.  

 Look at these idiots. The community board didn't approve of what he thinks would resolve his failing health. Chinese gets in the way of intelligence. Most Taiwanese workers are stupid. They are exploited and cheated every day because they are stupid. 

Look at that ugly piece of shit. Arrogant ignorant useless slime ball scumbag 

Can I shove shit in his mouth, please??? Can I see him die under the wheel of one of his stupid customers? Can I laugh and remain calm knowing such a shit wad lives in our building, that most tenants don't have the nerve to tell him what a shithead he is and put him in his place! 

Can his stupid wife be stupider than a slug? 

Taiwan is a fucked up place. Most people here are stupid or stupider than this superstitious scumbag 

     The trouble started October 30, 2019. It started with the laying of waterproofing cement and new tiles in the meeting room. That Wednesday, the road outside our condo was paved after seventeen years. The possibility of extra asphalt laid in front of our driveway or entrance was thwarted by Motorhead's meddling to have his private project done; the worker said he couldn't do it because Motorhead wanted it, too. The next day, Dr. Know confronted Leona with accusations outside the doorman's office and Leona handled it well. He came to be on her side, apologized, and without any names being mentioned, blamed his old friend, Motorhead, instead and complimented her on her good job. The following day, Motorhead's wife corralled her and started sobbing  how the three cesspool holes drilled into the veranda in front of his tire shop a few years ago was causing him illness; he had not used his universal card until that. My wife had to take her aside and console her suggesting everyone was getting old, the sewer holes were not the problem, and suggesting it might be time for Motorhead to hang up his tires and move back to Pingtung. Thank Goodness she has the energy to fight back without losing it. 

          On November 23, she got a call that the obnoxious tenant  had the cesspool holes outside his tire repair shop removed without the community board's permission; My wife is the manager of the board. We came home and visited our assemblyman who advised her to call the police, file a report, and then sue him. She was on the verge of a showdown and was strong enough to pull it off. 

     That night, out of nervousness, I couldn't sleep. I was upset because my wife, Mr. Mao, and Ms. Shi decided to dissolve the community board over the building's disregard for its authority, lack of confidence or participation. This could be a good thing for her and the others allowing them to stand back from the gossip of unappreciative tenants; they really don't deserve her dedication, but we live in this building. I'm concerned what will happen when responsibility is relinquished, but not what will happen to the building for it will take an earthquake to reveal its cracks and tear it down. 

     It could be a good thing for her and us; more travel, more peace, but there was a fight to be won to establish modern management methods for decision making and maintenance in our condo. Two years ago, Mr. Pig was elected manager and didn't maintain the lawn, repair the meeting room, or cooperate with the treasurer promptly causing her to resign after for years only to be urged to return; she was manager by default. Perhaps that is what is going to happen again when she announces the decision not to run at the yearly meeting in a few weeks. The last straw was Shithead (nee Motorhead) unilateral decision to have dismantled the emergency access to the cesspool under his storefront; put to its "original condition" because the new fengshui was bad for his health. Though she had called the cops to file a report, she was backing off after consulting  her lawyer friend who said she was in a lose-lose situation; Shithead had the right to dig it up unilaterally since it is in front of his property. The ugly side of Taiwan hit home. 

      All week long, every noise that came from Shithead's tire repair shop was more annoying since his removing the cesspool access manholes on Saturday morning. My wife has been livid about his disregard for her authority as the community board manager and is tending her resignation in a letter to all residents, her refusal to have anything to do with the committee in the future. Ms. Shi is resigning, too, her treasurer job, with two terminally ill members of her family to care for. She barely completed the financial reports. Shithead was having the cement ground four floors down, annoying at any hour, but it was only 7:30 am.  People say there is too much liberty in Taiwan (outside of Taipei) but I will take this chaos to NYC's choke hold. 

     As with everything else he's done, and everything every inconsiderate slob in Taiwan does, no one told him to stop; they don't want make waves; they go around it like they do motorcycles, shops, and restaurant kitchens on sidewalks blocking verandas. Our next door neighbor says she scolded Shithead. She told my wife she called the government bureau and they were sending someone to inspect it.

          On the 27th it was quiet when I went out on the patio. so far this morning unlike the day before until there went the whining of the sander again; It was cool out, anyway, so I went inside. We could hear the whining inside, too. 

          Shithead thinks he will get the money from our building to pay the sewer rats for their work; I am sure of it. My wife said the doorman heard someone say Happy Farmer was secretly going into the office to get the chop to sign the agreement to pay so she had the locks changed on the office door. The building was going to waste a lot of money without someone responsible stopping them. I hoped my wife would get convinced to stay on as manager and be the one to do it. There would be no Christmas tree put up this year otherwise.

          On the 28th, she contacted the waterworks department. They were sending a representative to talk with our neighbors about the price our building would incur for attaching five cesspools to the new sewer system. Shithead was spreading rumors that it was free and we denied him a connection out of spite. The connection should be to his mouth! My wife was so upset that her good name was being soiled by him and the other prejudiced scumbags in our building. One bitch, the one that once complained my bike was in the meeting room, actually denied the proof she showed her, to her face! 

      Too bad that all the slime balls in our building, the majority, never attended a community board meeting or participated in upkeep of our building. Leona, Ms. Shi, the doorman, and Mr. Ma and No-Pain-No-Gain's mom had been actively talking to neighbors in the lobby coming home from work. In any event, she and Ms. Shi would not accept a nomination to return to the committee.

      Only Mr. Mao said he would help. I was not happy about that.  She realized he made a mistake not getting a petition signed to do the emergency cesspool work a few years ago. The storefront slobs would deny asking him to take action to repair the popping sewer hole cover on the veranda.  She was  asking Mr. Mao to call the sewer company that did the emergency fitting to come and explain their procedure our ignorant neighbors; why there had to be three holes and why covering them up, as Shithead has done, is wrong and dangerous

          On November 28th, we had a rally outside Shithead's tire shop yesterday with four supporting tenants and six representatives from waterworks and a cesspool excavator company confronting the rumor-mongers at Renoir Condominium.  My wife and I  took videos.  Mr. Mao and Ms. Shi assisted her with the doorman directing traffic, handing out water, and stopping fights from escalating to confront Shithead and his Slug wife, Happy Farmer, and Forkman, the forklift slob,  came to fork himself. with the truth about no free sewer-solid city hook-up and the dangers of methane gas build-up from three sealed cesspools under Shithead's feet. 

     We got, on video, the technicians explaining to the peanut gallery whether or not they accepted the truth, which they didn't on the spot, but at least two dimwits were possibly enlightened that they had been lied to by Shithead. Shithead and his Slug accepted that they alone would pay for the dismantling and recovering of the cesspool access holes; they had threatened to have our building foot the bill. They took the fifth in admitting they were spreading rumors but Leona was unrelenting; they admitted by omission of response, only changing the subject and averting a direct response. We got it all on cellphone video and audio but one ten-minute clip of mine was inadvertently muted. Leona has it all though. The next step is to get written reports from the govt. agency and the sewer experts for presentation in our annual community board meeting in two weeks. 

          My wife stood up for me when Forkman raised his voice and cursed me in Taiwanese for video backing Shithead. I understood to say just as loudly that it was my freedom to film him in a public meeting. My hand was shaking as I prepared for a fight I wasn't backing off from. He wised up and moved his ass back into the safety of the storefront with other jackals. I also got into an argument with Happy Farmer for filming him and both me and Leona told him not to dare raise his voice at me. I heard that he quieted down to listen to reason of the experts. One storefront jackal using the disposal of her garbage was also quieted by our community board in reasonable discussion. She said she had told Shithead not to unilaterally dismantle and recover the cesspool access on the veranda outside his shop. The miserable bitch that had scolded me for my bike passed through the lobby and was still in denial waving off the community board  and scurrying away after being shown proof the city sewer line hook-up was not free and would bankrupt our building if we went on-line. I was glad to see my little dance a few days ago on the veranda disturbed The Slug enough to bring it up in grievance. 

          I am proud of my wife for leading this fight to save our building from tyranny and her good name from being soiled by these ignorant neighbors. She has done more than anyone to safeguard the treasury and protect our little condominium from foolish expenditures realizing our aging building needs all the funds it can keep for emergency repairs. When she and Ms. Shi announce the end of their year as manager and treasurer January 1st the building will have to find its own people to run it. Let Mr. Mao be the watchdog but not share his connections that have saved us money. Leona is adamant she is finished being lied around and unappreciated. Let Marble Lady climb six flights when the elevator breaks and there's no money left to repair it. Let the water pumps break, security compromised when the doorman leaves and the cleaning lady isn't paid. Let the bills go unpaid, maintenance fees go uncollected, and the building show its age outside our humble abode. It can't depend on three largely unappreciated residents volunteering their time and effort when there are fifty units of people that live here, too. 

International Baseball Comes to Taichung

I rode to the Taichung International Stadium along the Han River and onto a path under highway #74 arriving 
early expecting long lines for general admission 1000 NT
 seats; there were none. I walked around, bought a cap and tried to find the way in. I was led away from two ticket takers
 to the back of the stadium. I learned that my seat was in the bleachers with had no access to the grandstand to sneak into. 
I sat in the first row behind the left field fence.

The final score of 6-1;  four unearned runs due to errors.

Read Taipei Times article here. 

Taichung International hold 12,000. 
I'd say there were 7,000 people last evening. It was so far from home plate; that and a double echo from two sides of the grandstand that sounded like how Ebbets Field sounded. It was hard to see the battery.. 

The LED scoreboard was behind us; 
I had to turn to see the image. 

Here is the opening ceremony of the series.
They played 'anthems' from both team's home. 

Read "Extra Innings and Outings" here.

The President of WBSC, Riccardo Fraccari

Outside ground level ticket booths, shops and food court. 

If Taiwan can hold on, they can go to Super Round in Japan. 

With franchised food stands upstairs on the rotunda, I got
 home-made duck wraps before I went into the bleachers 
where one ah-ma was selling guava and corn dogs. I had 
brought two tall cans of Taiwan beer to wash it down.  My 
dinner last evening was two hot dogs on buns from 7-11 
and two tall cans of Taiwan Beer; together 160-$5.33. 
That would be at least $21 at Yankee Stadium. The best thing about Taiwan is you can legally bring food in from outside. There is no searching of bags or metal detectors, and few police!

Jesmuel Valentin had a hard time at second base making three errors and being involved in a fourth. "Chinese Taipei" had four unearned runs and won needing only four hits. 

"Chinese Taipei" has just beaten Venezuela and goes
 on to "Super Round" in Tokyo Nov. 11-16

Read Taipei Times article here.

More people the second night, perhaps 10,000.  International games are different from local CPBL in that there is no noise when the foreign team is batting. The go-go dancers on the Taiwan team's dugout (left-home team against Puerto Rico, right-visitors' dugout against Venezuela. You could hear a pin drop .The brass band was quiet, too, and moved with the team. 

A group of men, smoking, having a good time, stand
outside locked doors sneaking a free peek at the game
through a clearing near the left field foul line.

The Venezuela bullpen was used with too much finesse;
five times to support starter, Alvarez, who was removed 
in the fourth inning; he hadn't given up any runs 
and only three hits. 

At both games, fans got a two-color print "scarf"
when entering with the flags of the teams home.
Each read:"NA NA NA HEY HEY HEY GOODBYE";
 a "NA" was missing 

Pinch-hitter V.H. Chu's double that scored
the first Taiwan run in the seventh.

Relief-pitcher Miguel Socolovich, who gave up
 two doubles and a walk in his 1 2/3 innings, was the loser.

     Taiwan, or “Chinese Taipei” as it’s called, beat Venezuela 3-0 and goes on to the next round in Japan. It is so cool to sit in the stadium and watch a game instead of staying home. The bleacher seats will not be occupied by me in the future. I had thought the lowest price tickets would put me in the grandstand where I could choose a vacant seat but there was no connection but a closed walkway. I made the best of it and had fun.I am going to go to a lot more baseball games next season and will keep my eyes open for more off-season games.

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Purchase "Unnatural Beauty;Poems from the Han Riverside" here.

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved 

Taichung's International Animated Dreams

          The Taichung International Animation Festival is in its fifth year at Kbro Theaters in Taroko Mall, Taichung. There are dozens of full length and film shorts being shown between October 11th  and 20th, afternoons and evenings and mornings on weekends, many of them vying for awards in the competition. I am studying the TIAF book we picked up at the theater last week and highlighting shows. The tickets are 160 NT the day of the shows but only 80  for students and those over 65. 

          Watching the short film competition at the Taichung International Animation   Festival (TIAF) was like sleeping with my eyes open, Competition 4 mostly dreams and Competition 3 mostly nightmares. Naturally the 3’s were approved for viewers aged six and over and the 4’s over twelve. Each segment had seven films for a total of fourteen; as short as four minutes and as long as eighteen. As with dreams and nightmares, I slumbered in my theater seat as I would going to bed, without a thought of what illusions I’d experience in each rapid eye movement period. The writers of these films woke up and put their memories on film, eventually producing animation and soundtrack. I was in every film-maker’s head along with the audiences.

 At the end of the sets, we could ask a producer of a film questions and make a tear on the paper listing the seven films near the one we liked best. At first I wasn’t sure what to do, instructions being in Mandarin. I thought I needed to make a mark with pen on the slip and caught the eye of a young woman to borrow a pen. She explained the tear method and continued to chat as we left the theater for my intermission; I would be back in for the next set of films. She really liked animation; she was going to many shows. I asked for suggestions. I told her I liked a TIAF t-shirt she was wearing.  It was a raffle gift for buying tickets to five showings, she said. Since I was planning to come back for more shows, I chose three more shows, one free for choosing to attend the award ceremony, and was given a sealed lottery ticket to see what gift I had won; it was a TIAF tote bag.

     Director in Focus; Raimund Krumme's program was forty-two minutes worth of six animations, with the artist himself joining us for a Q&A afterwards. Mr. Krumme is considered one of the most important contemporary animation artists, but his minimalist style leaves me cold. "Rope Dance", voted one of the 100 most important animations of all time, was first in the set. The calisthenics of two black stick figure men in a stark black-lined box with a ribbon of red ink joining them was an engineer’s dream, amazing for its versatility and cleverness. But I was raised on Looney Tunes and Betty Boop and required some more slapstick to brighten my animated existence. However, I could see how Mr. Krumme should be admired for his purist calligraphic brush stroked exercises. I wasn't surprised when he admitted in the Q&A that whatever impression viewers had, like the floating audience in "Spectators", was fine with him; "Once I draw it it belongs to them," he said, but I missed any political message he said he had in "The Message" as rumors spread that "he's back again." "Crossroads", his film from 1991, was not unlike "Rope Dance" from 1986 but there were five black stick figure men, four of them interacting with the first through angles that morphed from passage ways to cliff sides and crosswalks. "Passage" was an exercise in geometries with a nod towards things that skid on ice and snow. Now I know Krumme, and will not seem dumb at cartoon cocktail parties, but my favorite artist Crumb (or should I say "arteest") is Robert.

With the eight short animated films I saw in "TIAF Observatory: Harmony & Disharmony of Narrative", that made twenty-eight films; six from Raimund Krumme, seven in "Short Films in Competition 4", seven in "Competition 3". I heard from my animation companion, Ms. Yang, that two of the films I saw won placement in the award ceremony: "The Night of the Plastic Bags" and "Winter in the Rainforest." Other winners were sets I didn't attend; she saw them all! I will say something about each film I saw: 

Remote Life Drawings struck me as very sloppily done, but it was done that way on purpose, with smudges, fingerprints, and spills. If they tried to make it look amateurish, they succeeded.



Flow, initially,  was my favorite entry in Competition 4. The flow of lines morphed occasionally into recognizable figures as the artist followed a woman on a day in the life from wakefulness to tropical vacation after a flight, but the hurricane that stirs it up is a crescendo



Movements was ten minutes of a knobby creaking tree moving slowly in comparison with a greyhound, a baobab, and the earth itself. The revelation was not earth-shattering; in fact, aside from the sound effects of the old tree, I felt like time had slowed down.


Winter in the Rainforest was  my third favorite in Competition 4. I loved the porcelain-looking animals in the real life background footage with the sound of the season turning frigid and the water rapids replenishing towards spring.

Deep Love started with plastic bags blowing up a statue of Lenin and ended up with the current corrupt leader of Ukraine. I couldn't get the connection with the title. It was a bunch of littered streets and graffiti in an ugly city setting. It reminded me of New York City in the 70's.




Tututu was my choice for the best of Competition 4. I was surprised when the artist herself, Rosa Peris (in the lead photo of this blog) came out to speak with us afterwards. The humanity of a ballerina daydreaming about the beautiful life as she stumbles and is ridiculed by other dancers was touching.


Kingdom looked like something a classmate in junior high school might have drawn between classes. I don't remember anything about it; that's how impressed I was by it.

Every film in Competition 3 was like a nightmare, starting with Imbued Life. The taxidermist's attitude reminded me of the heroine in The Sound of Water. With the film she found in the animals' bodies made me think of my youngest daughter (who studied it and worked in Paxton) and her photographer boyfriend.

Fox Boy was the most poignant social commentary when a naive child finds a way into a paradise that becomes a nightmare hunted by children with fox heads until he realizes he can't beat them and joins them wearing a fox head he finds.



Still Life still baffles me. I have no idea what it was about. I sat for six minutes watching artifacts moved in different poses with some corny Finish narrative.


Metamorphosis was my favorite from Competition 3 because it was so gruesome and had ugly faces on the characters, including the dog. The cigarette smoking  slob redeems himself in liberation from his ugly wife becoming a butterfly from a pupa and escaping through the basement window of his ugly home. 

Inside Blue was an exercise in geometric shapes in a bathroom that the character draws around his body parts to confide him; very neurotic and annoying film.



Looking back on Coyote, I now feel it was one of the most comprehensively disgusting film I saw at the festival, but now I know why the coyote howls at the moon. I would too if I had to go through the gut-wrenching shit he endured in his family. This film will remain with me like Van Gough's Scream does. 

The Night of the Plastic Bags was fifth on my list in this set but was a winner in the Festival. The film noir feel and  comic book sensation was too literal to be symbolic. It was the second film I saw that had plastic bags as villains.

The eight short animations in the TIAF Observatory began with Threads. All films, but one, seemed to be about family life or relationships, and threads showed how a mother adopts her child, nurtures her, and lets her go from the red thread that united them. Very sweet and touching.


The Triangle was a hilarious depiction of infidelity when Eduard, a little man in a mafioso suit emerges from under the sink and enters the dull life of Julia and Victor breaking up their marriage. The only dialog was the couple calling each other's name in different inflections and had me in stitches.

Mamoon was so spooky with shadows of a mother and her infant forced to leave their geometric home. It was one dimensional though with little room for interpretation other than its intention.


The Making of Longbird could have been a Spongebob Squarepants episode on how to make a cartoon. The dialogue was right out of Brighton Beach; I could hear now. I couldn't stop chuckling but in the end I was saddened that the paper-cut figure was abandoned by its artist and went up in flames. It didn't deserve that end. 

Las Del Diente made me feel like I was overhearing women's conversation through the wall of a locker room. I'm sure if I were female, this film would have been more meaningful, but the light blue drawings morphing from fetus to office, may me feel "so that's what intelligent women discuss!"

Lonely Bones was the most frightening film of the festival. I was having flashbacks of bum trips watching this one.  The rotting floors, the sewer lid over a funeral pyre into a bottomless pit, the reapers attacking, the darkness. Wow.



As scary as the previous film was, The Hunt was like Pink Panther in its silly childishness and simple drawings and fruit colorful primitive landscapes.The story was silly, too, down to the moose that bops to a transistor radio round his neck


Finally, Scenery, the world is a series of sets that only we can animate with love, was more satire than revelation. The Spanish narrative was serious in its silliness, but the soundtrack was eerie.

           I have a ticket for one more showing in this Festival; Sunday's Aragne: Sign of Vermillion. It is the only full length feature I will have seen, but I wanted to share this blog with you now so you have three days of animated films left to view before they are erased from our memories until next year, if there is a next year. Thanks to Taichung's previous mayor, Lin, the camera was rolling with TIAF for five years but, I heard, there were some problems this year and our current un-imaginative,  Mayor Lu, may not follow up next year, she dropped the ball on other Taichung international cultural projects for enlightening people, like the Flower Expo. 
     I relished having a crumb of Manhattan dynamic in Taichung for a week; it is as rare here as fresh air. Take off your surgical masks, Taichung, and breathe while you can still pretend through the magic of animation. 

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Purchase "Unnatural Beauty;Poems from the Han Riverside" here.

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved