The good news is that, according to Dictionary.com the word “Fuck” when translated into Estonian, becomes “Jamama” which is awesome. The bad news is that it only does so when used in the sense of “To fuck with some one’s mind” or “I’m gonna fuck with those guys over there so they think dogs are made of ham” or whatever, but not as a simple curse. Which is a shame, because the idea of some guy dropping a hammer on his toe and yelling “Jamama!” really did have an appeal to me.

I would like the Wikipedia to make a list of real-life supervillains. That, I think, would be a useful category. Any criminal with a bizarre deformity could make the list. As could any who use code-names like the Zodiac Killer or the Unabomber. Most dictators would also be on the list. That would be a great list. Get working on that, Wikipedia guys.

So I bought Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People. Quite good. Quite good. I had played the first Sam and Max game made by the same company, but not the others, but this I went and ordered a season pass for. I truly miss adventure gaming. The days of Sierra’s various Quest games passed far too soon.

While I was ordering from the Telltale Games site I figured that it wouldn’t hurt to also order a shirt with Max, of Sam and Max on it. Unfortunately, instead of ordering a Men’s XL, I ordered a small girl’s shirt. Between this and my recent overly-shiny Ghostbusters shirt, what the chunks is my Internet Shirt Ordering Subconscious trying to tell me?

Now don’t get me wrong, I find the Internet Movie Database extremely useful, as any Internet user is likely to. I mean sure, the comments on any given page are forty-five percent idiotic whining and forty-five percent shallow nitpicking, but I’m able to ignore all that and use it to learn about movies and stuff.

The reason I’m currently calling it an idiot is I’ve started to notice the “Plot Keywords” section. It’s probably always been there, but I only noticed it within the last couple months. At first glance it makes sense to have keywords that sum up significant things in the movie so someone who is looking for say, Viet Nam films is gonna be able to sift through them.

But look at some of the things that turn up in the Keywords! I’ll go to the Dark Knight page to get examples. There’s the ones that make sense, of course: “Vigilante”, “Dark Hero” and “Superhero” are all well and good. But then there’s the truly mundane: “Funeral”, “Gun”, “Bruise”, “Butler”, “Billiards” and “Applause” are all in there.. And we also have the truly inane: “Altered Version Of Studio Logo”, “Heavy Rubber”, “Number In Character’s Name”, “Title Spoken By Character ” and “Punched In The Face” leave me questioning the point altogether.

My main concern here is that these things rarely fit my definition of PLOT keywords. Seriously, if there is anyone who likes “Billiards” enough that they’re looking up movies about it, they’re going to be disappointed by the Dark Knight.

Also, there was a character with a number in his name?

I suppose I’ve let the site cool down enough after Marq overused it and risked causing a fire. I guess I should relate some tales of my trip to the Other Side Of The World.

I guess I’ll go chronologically. After a whole bunch of planes and the longest travel time I’ve yet experienced, I ended up in Shanghai. Terry and Buffy still had a day of teaching school left, so I got to see all the little kids they teach, which was cool. I found Shanghai to be quite humid and I totally sweat like a person smuggling nuclear cocaine into a police state. The second day there, though, it poured rain. By the end of that the shoes I’d brought were totally ruined and we had to buy me some new footwear. We also bought me some shorts to sleep in, because it had not occurred to me that what I usually sleep in might be a little not-enough for the trip. The footwear we ended up with turned out to be sandals. I generally am not a big sandal wearer, but these ones worked out pretty darn well, especially considering the amount of time we spent in the desert where full socks and shoes would probably have been way too much. Oh, we also bought a bag for me to carry around which was smaller than the big one I planned to use. Not a bad idea either.

Anyway, as I mentioned we went to the desert. The bulk of the trip was spent in the province of Xinjiang, which is the Westernmost part of China. We totally flew to a place called Urumqi and then another flight to Kashgar and that was where we began our travels.

In Kashgar we totally got to see markets and bazaars and the like. People there really want to sell you stuff. I’m a total sucker for salespeople and in most cases would probably be talked into buying stuff or feeling bad, but Terry and Buffy were much better at handling this. Plus, since I didn’t speak the language I was mostly not the target of anyone’s attempts. Also, haggling is a big thing there and I am totally not used to that. As a self-hating and money-hating person, I’m generally okay with paying ridiculously marked-up prices. It’s how I rid myself of all that currency I neither want nor deserve, y’know?

Referring to my notes, I see that on the Thirtieth of June it was that we took a camel tour. That is to say we rode out into the desert on camels. Now we didn’t ride out very far. We pretty much just went out to the first couple dunes and looked out on the rest. And the ride was shorter than advertised as well. But I was okay with it. I’d never ridden a camel before, so that was neat and I’d never seen desert sand dunes in person so that was neat (and ran my hand through the sand, as well). Though as we were out there the wind kicked up and we got lots of sand blowing into our faces. I couldn’t put my teeth together without chewing sand for hours afterwards.

Another cool plus for that part of the trip is that the three of us went on this camel tour with four other travellers all of whom seemed very nice and gave us companions for various other excursions during the remainder of our days in Xinjiang.

The next significant segment of the journey was a ride up into the mountains to see this cool mountain lake (which I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of). Though an hours-long trip through lovely mountains was there to break it up, I was particularly impressed by seeing snow after having been in the desert so soon before. I was able to appear impressive by simply knowing what a yurt was ahead of time. The way to be a successful idiot is to make it appear as though your idiocy is a ploy to cover some hidden intelligence. Though we did not sleep overnight in the yurt, we all had a good nap before we went back to our hotel.

Sometime later we left Kashgar via rail. We rode a train through the desert to Turfan. I think I slept more than usual on the train, because it was supposed to be twenty-some hours but didn’t really feel that long. We’d opted to pay for sleeper rooms so we’d have beds. Terry and Buffy told me of times they’d just got seats and had to sit there for terribly long and crowded rides. Myself only having experienced this way, I can say kinda like train travel.

Turfan is another nice little desert city. One thing I really liked was the big roads that were trellised by these grapevines to allow for shade (there’s a picture on the Wikipedia page even). While in this town we also saw a mosque with the tallest minaret in China, the remains of a fort that was probably pretty impressive back in the day what with being on this plateau thing and some little village I didn’t catch the name of which seems to have less people left than it once did. Also that village had the remains of some Buddhist temples that had been defaced when the town was invaded. Also in Turfan we used an Internet cafe which looked pretty much as one of those would be expected to look, though dim lighting and air conditioning are pretty nice in the desert. The Internet is not easy to use over there, though. Oh and we ate at a place called Best Food Burger which has my favorite name for a fast food place because of the sheer confidence it exudes.

Oh yeah, speaking of food I forgot to mention that we ate a Pakistani place back (I think) in Kashgar. It was really good and I find myself wishing such a place were around here. It’s not like my street here doesn’t have a million restaurants already. For the most part I enjoyed the Chinese food as well. We ate way more than I generally do. I know more than one meal a day is supposed to be healthy, but it takes some time for me to train myself to manage it. But as I said, I liked the food. And I didn’t seem to embarrass myself with the chopsticks either.

Okay where was I? Right, so we left Turfan and took a bus back to Urumqi. On the bus they played some Bollywood movie which didn’t look all that great but I was amused that when the main character went on a revenge driven quest to kill the criminals who, (I think) killed his wife and an elderly man (his father? his fighting master? I don’t know) he wore a leather jacket with the American Flag on it. That flag will become visual slang for “Gonna Kick Some Ass” before we even know what happened.

We were mere moments too late at Urumqi airport and we missed our flight (overzealous but obviously confused cab company owner leading us on a mad chase for one of his cabs didn’t help with that…) and we ended up spending an hour or two trying to get money off of credit cards and ended up spending the night in a hotel before we were finally able to fly back to Shanghai in the morning.

Since I had to leave the day after we got back to Shanghai (and Terry and Buffy move the day following) there isn’t much else to tell. They apparently didn’t quite feel right putting me to work on my vacation (though I’d not have minded) so I spent most of the time that remained simply relaxing. Then I got back onto a plane and eventually made it back here. I think that’s about it.

All in all I think I had a pretty awesome trip. My next travels can not come soon enough. I have a first batch of pictures up on Facebook for those who can see that. When Terry and Buffy have finally got around to making their own albums I’ll make a second with whatever pictures are left over. We certainly have enough of them.

And once again I must give a sincere Thank You to Terry and Buffy for letting me come with them on that trip. Hopefully I wasn’t much trouble to carry around. Thanks guys.