Wordsmoker

Samurai Panda Planet will not be as hostile as the title might convey and will also be surprisingly lacking in both samurai and pandas and we’d ask you to please ignore the crazy man with black paint around his eyes dressed in pretty snazzy samurai robes parading around the colony and can often be found in the promenade practicing his swordsmanship with a samurai sword that may or may not have the blade dulled and may or may not be just for show.

Also ignore the rumors that this crazy samurai is indeed this planets founder and one and only male resident.  Ignore that.  Please direct your attention to the following:

An Audio Track: The most difficult decision, I assure you.  My knee jerk selection would be The Essential Neil Diamond, but solo Karaoke will be outlawed on my planet, and my procreation partner would most assuredly kill me and/or herself if that’s all there is to listen to.  I think I’ll go with The Great Misdirect, the latest album from Between The Buried And Me, this year’s best metal album and possibly the best this decade.  Here’s the near 10 minute first single, Obfuscation:

I know this doesn’t really align well with most’s tastes, but hey, it’s my colony dammit and this music soothes and inspires me more than Mozart ever could (unless he had discovered distortion peddles in his day).

A Visual Image: Simple. Picasso’s Guernica.

A Video Track: AK 100: 25 Films By Akira Kurosawa, a box set put out by the Criterion Collection released this last Tuesday.  Obviously, film is a very integral part of my life, and, even though I claimed the audio track decision was the most difficult, this one is proving more so.  I concede a box set of 25 films may be a bit of stretch for this category, but come on.  Come on.  Can’t I please take my box set?  Please?  Why should I just have to pick just one?  Okay, okay, fine.  It would seem appropriate for me to select the classic Seven Samurai, but I don’t know that I would.  Kurosawa’s later film Ran left a larger impression on me, but I’d almost be inclined to pick something super long so there’s more to watch.  Something like Masaki Kobayashi’s nine-and-a-half-hour The Human Condition.  Quantity and quality.  Here’s a trailer:

Book: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.  Again, quantity and quality.  And maybe isolating it from all other literature will allow for me to finally get through the damn thing.

Memory Box: When I was Southern California for the majority of 2007 working towards a career in the music industry, I would try to get back to Utah as much as possible to visit My Indian Companion, which I was able to do about every six or eight weeks.  There was one trip back in particular, I think the second time I went back, in which I remember feeling more anxious than I’d ever been to see her and also more excited than I’d ever been after catching that first glimpse of her after coming out of the terminal.  I ran to her and scooped her up and asked her to continue being my girlfriend and that moment always comes to mind whenever I try to define “happiness.”

A Treat: All past posts for this outpost have proclaimed confectionery pleasantries, but I’m hesitant to pursue the same sugary path.  A treat for me would be Jack-In-The-Box’s now defunct (at least locally) Chipotle Chicken Ciabatta sandwich.  Perhaps because it’s no longer available, but also because it was effing awesome.  If not that, assuming some kind of future fast-food embargo, I’d definitely select homemade biscuits smothered in country gravy.  Or a maple bar.  I can’t resist those.  Yeah, let’s go with that one.

Another Sentient Being: Kaya, the pit-bull mix that opened up my heart and stole it.  She’s a good, loyal and loving companion, a sweetheart that wouldn’t hurt a fly.

A Partner For Procreation: There’s two answers here, and it hinges on whether or not it’s clear in the colonization manual that this partner would be involved in further interaction beyond that of the scientific whoopie.  I know it sounds shallow, because, well, it is, but there’s a person I’d pick if there was no expectation of conversation or interaction outside of the Smokermedia 235 Coliseum-Slash-Theatre-Slash-Scientific-Sexy-Time-Observatory-And-Emporium, and that person is Kim Kardashian, a person who, on the surface, I find extremely attractive but who, when she opens her mouth, gets less and less attractive.  Caveats aside, if there is expected interaction outside the Emporium, I’d go with Natalie Portman.

A SmokieBot™: In the future, I imagine there’d be a way, some godforsaken way to create a machine that could be charged with taking on the burden of performing my duties of defecation.  That’s right.  A robot that could shit for me, thereby eliminating the tedium and opening up more time for other, more productive things.

What Was I Before I Left?: A journalist and one of the only survivors of the much publicized (thanks to me!) failed experiment that was Smokermedia 234.  But hey, the prosthetic works great!  Just don’t tell Ms. Portman.