The White Peril 白禍

I tell you--this month! Lots of planning and administrative-document-writing, which I realize is necessary but which tends to make me a little cranky. To top it off, my assistant's been out sick since Monday. No, I'm not one of those managers who need to ask the receptionist to help him work the fax machine, but my workload went up measurably, of course, and a lot of it was stuff that I haven't had to do for years. Not a slack minute.

I did, however, have to shoehorn in time to go to my dermatologist so she could irradiate my chin again. I'd managed to become the proprietor of a rather large wart, probably because I shaved over it for a good week or two before realizing it wasn't my usual acne. Irradiate is, I presume, the medical term for what she did; to a layman like me, it sounds as if she were going to kill off all the Montezuma's revenge while leaving me fresh and juicy. In reality, she used some kind of pulsing-laser thing to burn away the virus. She tried to get it all three weeks ago, but, apparently, there's a danger of scarring if you get too thorough, so she just zapped down as deep as she dared. I had to keep it bandaged and slick it down with an antibiotic ointment of singularly repellant texture.

Unfortunately, they can't always extirpate it with the first treatment, and sure enough--damn!--it started growing back in one tiny place, and several new little ones (I have a heavy beard and give myself little nicks a lot) had grown in. Thus I found myself being "irradiated" yet again today, only this time in little places dotted around my chin. Three more weeks of ointment.

This normally wouldn't bother me too much--I don't like looking weird, but it's not as if I were in the market, or anything, and if Atsushi's not here, he doesn't have to deal with it. It's just that Japan's big spring bank holiday starts tomorrow, and he's coming home. He's had kind of a stressing run at work lately, and we're going to have an early birthday celebration because we can't get together on the actual day. So I'd been hoping to be back to normal when he got here, but no such luck. Another three weeks of looking like a sci-fi movie monster. And it's my chin, of course; there are only one or two places I can imagine that would interfere more with uninhibited amorousness. Guess I'm going to have to be really good with my hands.

Uh, so, yeah. I don't have any aspirations to being a one-stop source for news, but I normally do try not to offer up several consecutive days of scattiness. I've been kind of distracted, obviously; if it's shown, I'm sorry. Oh, yeah! And I think we're giving a dinner party, maybe? Have to check with Atsushi about that, given that I do the cooking.

Anyway, the weather's been gorgeous. Puts you in the mood for summer songs and hot-weather food. And Tokyo will be relatively empty for a few days, which is nice. For any Japan-based readers who are traveling for Golden Week, stay safe and have a great time. It's probable that I'll actually be back to more regular posting tomorrow-ish. Atsushi has a bunch of errands and will be spending some time with his parents while he's here, and while we have plans to enjoy the outdoors, I think we're both going to be tired enough to enjoy sitting at home and lazing plenty, too.

You gotta love that Dean. He takes that book quiz that's floating around and decides that one of the people he's going to pass it on to is "Sean Kinsell because he's fun to pick on." (Word to youngsters in the audience: You know how your parents keep telling you that when you grow up, you'll find like-minded people to hang around who will love and respect you for you you are? It's a total crock. Trust me--the best policy is swift and unapologetic VENGEANCE.)

I wasn't going to do anything with this, but today happens to be exactly one year after my first post. I never really planned to start a blog; I liked commenting at other people's places. But when Atsushi was transferred last March and I wanted something to help fill time while I felt sorry for myself, I asked Dean to set this up for me. As in, I got out my credit card and signed up for MT and hosting, and Dean presented me a week later with a blog ready for writing to (of course, I immediately set about changing the fonts and faggifying the color scheme, but I could have gone with his original template and had a respectable blue-and-white theme...sort of like on-line ticking). He's also helped me out a lot with my dumb-ass tech problems and by linking to me frequently.

And, as you can tell, I've warmed to it. The number of readers I get amazes me; I'm very grateful. And it's been good, I think, for my relationship with Atsushi. His English is great, but we speak Japanese at home and watch Japanese television and have all Japanese friends. There's nothing about that that's a problem--it's the life I've chosen--but it means that he rarely gets to see me be a full-bore American in my native tongue. With the blog, he does, and, while I know I don't always show myself to best advantage here, I think it's a good thing that he has a fuller idea what kind of man he's with.

Uh, so anyway, thanks again to Dean and to all of you. For more about the Real Me, here's that book quiz:

You're stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Don't we all die, anyway? If I could be any book until either the firemen or the bomb got me, sheer arrogance would make me want to be the Bible (the KJV--none of that bowdlerized "accessible" crap), which is probably more important in Western history than any other single book.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

I really don't think so.

The last book you bought is:

Singular? Like one at a time? This test was obviously not written by a book addict. Uh, say 破戒 (hakai: "broken commandment") by Shimazaki Toson. That wasn't actually it, I'm pretty sure, but it's kind of first in line for me to read next.

The last book you read is:

To be brutally honest? There was a copy of The Rules lying around our office--heaven only knows why--and I drifted through it while waiting for a friend.

What are you currently reading?

The book I'm carrying around with me and officially trying to get through is The Golden Bowl by Henry James; this time I'm going to finish it.

Five books you would take to a desert island.

• 恍惚の人、有吉佐和子作 (kokotsu no hito, ariyoshi sawako saku: "The Ecstatic Ones by Sawako Ariyoshi," translated pretty effectively as The Twilight Years)
  
• A History of Civilizations by Fernand Braudel
  
• The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
  
• 新古今和歌集 (shinkokinwakashu), the third of the anthologies of Heian Court poetry
  
• Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

I beg your pardon! I don't discuss my stick with anyone but my boyfriend.

Two announcements:

1. My old e-mail address doesn't work anymore, but you can e-mail me at skinsell[at]gmail[dot]com. I have not been trying to keep my contact information a secret; if you use the contact page at left, it sends a message to my gmail account with the address you enter as the reply-to, so I just figured people would figure it out. I guess it's not as obvious as I thought. Sorry about that. You don't have to look for a comment by me somewhere and lift the address from there.
   
   
2. Some of you could stand to learn how easy it is not to read a website. You just kind of...don't click on it, you know? If you want a website that's more gay, less gay, more Japan-focused, less Japan-focused, gay but without the jokey pop-culture stuff, nicer, nastier, more concise, lefter, righter, libertarianer, or not as pink and purple, by all means (1) find it and (2) read it instead of me. See? Easy.
   
   I'm not trying to avoid criticism or counter-arguments, and I've been known to respond favorably to requests that I comment on something I hadn't myself thought to address, if the subject interested me. I've received only two messages ever that I'd call hate mail, and only a handful more that I'd consider obnoxious about making an actual point; my mail volume is relatively small, but most of it is above-average in level of civility.
   
   I'm grateful for that, just as I'm grateful for those who read this site without commenting. Nevertheless, even if the tone is friendly, I don't see the purpose of messages that are the on-line equivalent of "You know, you'd be really cute if you were blond." Okay, so...no hard feelings, and good luck scamming on Brad Pitt over there. You can't please everybody, and I'm not interested in learning how I could if I were a different person.