zhui long

There’s noth­ing in this world you can’t turn into hero­in.

—Get Him to the Greek

At our last draft, Steph asked me what was new. It was weeks since we played, but noth­ing came to mind, and it felt strange to have no updates at all. It was only a few months ago that things fell apart. Things had been chang­ing quick­ly ever since.

And then, all of a sud­den, sta­bil­i­ty.

the hearth

The hearth.

Meanwhile, I’ve picked up an obses­sion with sort­ing my Magic cards. Darren came by a few weeks ago and he gave me his col­lec­tion, which we both start­ed around high-school. I have about 8000 cards now, ordered by rar­i­ty, colour, block, and alpha­bet­i­cal­ly, which took me the greater part of a week. There’s no deny­ing how sat­is­fy­ing it is to have a neat and orga­nized set, where I can quick­ly find a card instead of going through ran­dom hand­fuls.

I also start­ed watch­ing Cops, sea­sons 20–24, non-stop. A strange addic­tion1 for a real­i­ty TV show that’s no doubt biased in favour of law enforce­ment and against low-income cit­i­zens, but not glo­ri­fied with a nar­ra­tor, a sound­track, or any mon­e­tary incen­tives. After watch­ing the same episodes a few times, I feel like I have some inti­mate insight into the peo­ple who choose to break the law, and those who make careers out of stop­ping them.

They’re signs that I’m a glut­ton now, hav­ing to lose myself in some­thing, whether it’s being pro­duc­tive or social or hap­py.

Love used to be my drug of choice, but nowa­days it’s any­thing I can get.

  1. I used to see an episode here and there when I was a kid, but it was nev­er with any fre­quen­cy, and I haven’t seen one in years. I have no idea why I find it so fas­ci­nat­ing now. [↩]

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  1. I think a bet­ter way to put it is, you’re addict­ed to life and all the things you can do with it.

    After all, that’s the rea­son you’re here, sam­pling every­thing, good and bad, that life has to offer?

    • I’m not so sure it’s tak­ing advan­tage of what life has to offer; I think it’s more like I need some­thing to keep myself occu­pied. And as long as I’m hap­py, the rea­sons don’t mat­ter.

  2. Productive & Social & Happy Gluttony = Solution to human exis­tence pret­ty much. Nothing wrong with that. Unless you’re past those things and want to work toward Buddhahood. : )

    Two things must ye know about “COPS” shows.
    1) There are plen­ty more crim­i­nals you will nev­er see, because they are more dan­ger­ous than these; 2) Criminals who end up get­ting caught are, more often than not, not so much the worst of our soci­ety, but rather just the dumb­est. Our jails are not just the worst, but the stu­pid­est of the worst.

    I’ll nev­er under­stand why guys like watch­ing it. Husb loves it.

    • I’m not sure I can explain the appeal of Cops either. I think part of me enjoys it cause there are so many bad things in the news, and in Cops it’s usu­al­ly a hap­py end­ing or a good-guy-over­comes-bad-guy kind of thing. It’s a real­i­ty show that does­n’t make me want to put an axe through the TV, cause it’s the only one where stu­pid peo­ple don’t get away with doing stu­pid things.

      Also, the lit­tle mes­sages they have through­out bring mean­ing to the war being fought on the streets. I tried to watch a “best of” episode, a mon­tage of all the juici­est action through 700 episodes, but there was no expla­na­tion or debrief­ing at the end of each sequence, and it came out as sense­less vio­lence that I could only stom­ach for a few min­utes.

      • Xibee

        Hmmmmm that’s pos­si­ble he sees it in that Superhero way, maybe you’re right.

        I just see it as a bunch of trail­er­park trash I don’t even want to lis­ten to! X P

  3. Life is more fill­ing. Rarely see the word used in a pos­i­tive man­ner. I’m glad. :)

  4. Fascinations are what make us feel alive.

    • I don’t know what makes me feel alive any­more. I just know what makes me hap­py. Perhaps those are relat­ed though.

      Out of curios­i­ty, have you ever heard of the Cantonese slang that’s the title of this entry? Apparently, in orig­i­nat­ed from Hong Kong.

  5. I think there’s a slight dif­fer­ence between being hap­py and feel­ing alive. Being hap­py is more super­fi­cial.

    Yep. Zhui Long lit­er­al­ly means fol­low­ing (or chase after) a queue. The Chinese drag­on (long) is shaped like a queue. I guess it’s relat­ed to the tra­di­tion­al way of tak­ing hero­in.

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