Here's a story I told that has turned into a blog - that's how I like to do it now. The backdrop to the is a house in Denver that I'd been couchsurfing in for a month. This one had an especially interesting mix of male roommates... though some more than others. I hung out mostly with a guy named Paul. He's my age, has a degree in psych, loves listening/playing music, and works at a halfway house with a bunch of mentally unstable juvenile delinquents. He's pretty great... neurotic and passionate about whatever. He was one of those super alienated, depressed, punks who hated everything and most people when he was a teen. We went to a horrendous "singing Shabbat" service once - it was just like church... singing and dancing with the rabbi offering really dumb anecdotes in between. Paul's to roommate is a guy named Adam, a 27 year old woodsman who grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family (but has since fallen) and now teaches ESL. We went out to the woods a few times together and it was always great. He gave me a fishing pole and helped me buy some tackle, so now I spend a lot of time trying to suck more fishing knowledge out of him. He's one of the more stand up guys I've ever met, but what clued me in to his character was how he interacts with Tola.

Tola's real name is Brent, but someone started calling him Tola a few years back and it stuck. Tola doesn't seem to give a fuck about anything... he's the probably closest thing to a nihilist that I've ever seen in the wild. He's a skinny 21 year old kid, so even if he just has a beer every hour, he stays pretty drunk. When he's not drinking beer, he's drinking chocolate milk or soda. He doesn't drink water or eat fruits/vegetables. He once saw Adam holding an avocado and asked, "Are you really going to eat that moldy, misshapen orange?" Despite this terribly unhealthy intake, I've witnessed him working all day shoveling rocks in the sun or hiking a twelve mile trail without problems... in short, he's a tough little guy.

The first time I met him he had his shirt off and I noticed a huge raised scar in the shape of a "T" on his chest. The story goes that he got real drunk one night and let some girl brand him with a white hot butter knife. That thing is never going away, but because he's Tola, he doesn't really care. It itches and burns sometimes (as massive keloids scars tend to), so he's always stroking it... I equate this more with Harry Potter's forehead than Superman's chest, but the illustrations overlap into something strongly mythological. You'd think a person like this would be a danger to himself and others, but I don't really think he is. Yes, sometimes he lights things on fire inside houses, drives recklessly without his glasses, and talks shit to service employees that are bigger than him, but so far, so good. Part of the reason he stays out of trouble is that Adam looks out for him. They have one of the closest relationships I've ever seen between heterosexual men.

This doesn't make sense at first because Adam is pretty literary guy with damn strong moral fiber. Tola barely reads, can't write for shit, and makes dirty jokes about everything (and I do mean everything). I don't know why they get along so well, but they see something in each other that they really like. Adam once told me that he trusts my character judgments because I didn't write Tola off the first time I met him, like a lot of other people do. The kid is just witty - he has a fairly sharp mind that he uses in ways that often just aren't considered socially appropriate. He's also a self taught musician and can freestyle some really catchy little songs. Sure, he uses too many Boratisms, but who his doesn't these days? I like Tola because he just isn't a normal dude, he's simply more interesting.

However, the thing that really sold me on Tola is that he invented a new set of usages for the word "stallion" that I absolutely love. OK, so who cares, right? Well, I've spent a good amount of time pondering over the peculiar staying power of certain slang, so I think I have some background in declaring this to be important. 'Cool" has been the dominant linguistic feature of pop culture in America (and internationally) for a least half a century. Nothing else even comes close. I tried to make this point to some really dumb college girls a few week back and they sneered at this point, saying "It's so totally not 'chill' to say 'cool' anymore." Sure, kids are idiots, but I can't let that kind of thing pass. I tried explaining to them that they were merely using "chill" as a replacement for "cool" and that once the phase of while kids using old school hip hop signifiers like "fresh" and "dope" had lost their nostalgic cache, they'd be right back to using "cool" again. I'm not much into cultural studies, but I remember when we started using those three words - it was five years ago - that's how far back their cultural memory stretches... they probably don't much recall the preceding products of surf culture - "awesome" and "radical".

So, why am I impressed by Tola's use of "stallion"? It's partially because I know the person who invented it - really, he did, I've been fact checking. Have you ever met someone who invented something that could become legendary pop culture material? Fine, maybe you don't buy that claim yet yet, so I'll break it down into a dictionary style explanation so you can understand how intuitive it's usage can be.

The traditional definition goes as follows: "A stallion is an uncastrated male horse, generally retired from racing, that is considered a fine enough specimen to be used for breeding purposes." From a man's perspective, this has a trinity of positive connotations: strength, success, and sexuality. A stallion is a stud. Now, here's some of the ways in which one might use the word in the context of fishing. Adjective: "That's a stallion rod you've got there." Verb: "You've got to keep fighting and stallion through it." Command: "Pull on your panties and stallion up!" Noun: "That last fish was a real stallion." Adverb: "I'm surprised you reeled that big one in so stallionly." Rejoinder: "Stallion!"

Tola has mastered its use, which really helped sell it and get me to consider its viral possibilities. I want to make a video of him using it in public situations and put it online. Tola once had an entire interaction with a grocery store clerk using only the word "stallion" in different intonations. Just try to imagine the dialogue... it's stunning. Is it genius? I won't go that far, but I will say the following: You've really got to be thinking (living) outside the box to hatch innovative stuff like this. There's no reason to do it - there aren't going to be any formal rewards, but it is important that someone do it.

We can't just keep saying cool forever, dammit. White kids shouldn't have to feel guilty for appropriating other peoples' subcultural slang. The fact that some weird western kid invented "stallion" instead of a gangsta rapper makes me smile. If it never catches on with the masses... oh well. Maybe it will at least make it among his peers and cultural community. It's the kind of innovation that I'm happy enough to have just been exposed to... heck, I'll still use it if no one else does... and people will think I'm unique for it. And now I won't feel bad about that, because I've given credit where credit is due.

I have moved to Bangalore. I call it Bangles. The Karnataka state government recently changed the city's official name to Bengaluru (complete inconsistent spellings and accent marks I won't try to reproduce here), so I figured I might as well invent my own divisive nomiker. The locals don't much like my name, but since they have chosen to refer to themselves Bangaloreans (an awkward self reference if there ever was one), I don't much care... I call them Banglers. I didn't come to India particularly prepared (okay, so I read a few books), but perhaps I didn't really need to be. For the first time in three months, I can actually communicate on a fairly high level with the majority of the population because English is the lingua franca. This fact alone points to an immense cultural diversity I have not seen elsewhere. There are still so many things I have never experienced and so many things I do not understand about Indian society. However, there are great resources available to understand social processes here, whether through books, blogs, conversation, television, or simple observation. My Indian aptitude was pretty high anyways and it's easy to quickly uptake information around here. Suffice to say, I am excited about the possibilities.

Bangles is the smartest city in the country. This is the support center for silicon valley (some mean-spirited folks call it coolie valley) and there are over a million people working in IT here. This will be the first city in the world to establish a municipal WiMax network. It is the fastest growing city in India and the infrastructure of the city is struggling to cope with the growth. There are sometimes momentary power cuts in residential/small business areas to keep power flowing to the software companies. It isn't industrially polluted, but the traffic is terrible and sitting in it, especially on the back of a moto or in an auto rickshaw, is akin to the gas chambers. This is probably the most expensive city in the country, but it is still among the cheapest cities I have been to in Asia. The weather is perfect this time of year... much like SoCal. Goods and services generally cost locals a fifth of what they would back home. A dollar buys a full meal at a decent “stand up and eat” restaurant, a five mile auto rickshaw ride, 30 minutes of cell phones calls, and just about any used book. A very decent three bedroom place outside the city center can be had for $250/month. However, gas is more expensive than the in the US. As a foreigner, I get overcharged on a daily basis, but at least we can argue about it in English.

It's been a while since the last report from a Japanese sidewalk, but here I am at it again in the lovely city of Nara, a bit south of Kyoto. I should have met a woman named Mayumi about an hour ago, but I was late and my lateness was beyond my control. Now I can't get her on the phone and thus must do some good old fashioned waiting. At least the computer keeps me warm while I type.

Where have I been since last time? Kyoto! What a lovely city... it seems really huge whether you are in it or seeing it from above, but really it is stays true to its small town feel with a population of under one million. I rode my bike around the first three hours I was in the city and managed to see all the important eastern temples. I see them mostly from the outside of course, since I have no desire to pay to enter them and I know no one who has any special kind of pull with the local monks.

My host in Kyoto was a young man named Hiro - the best traveled Japanese person I have ever met – likely qualifying him for a very elite bracket for his country. He has never been to the Americas, Africa, or Australia, but he has covered almost all of Europe and Asia including all those backwater places that most Americans have never heard of or simply can't pronounce correctly. He also has the distinction of being the strangest Japanese person I have met, which doesn't say much since there seems to be much less variance in personality and lifestyle around here.

The best part of his life story is having spent three weeks in an Indonesian jail for having overstayed his visa and then spending three months in a Japanese mental hospital when he returned. After living with him for a few days, I could sort of discern how these things might have happened, but in my opinion, there is simply no plausible way in which either action could have been justified. He was diagnosed as a maniac, literally. Given, he sleeps only six hours a night and talks much more than the average Japanese person... and in a slightly broken English he has little confidence in no less. Hiro's claim is that traveling “changes his mind” because it makes him reconsider all the taken for granted thoughts and behaviors that go along with being Japanese. And he freely admits that in the time around that first trip he took to Southeast Asia, he had not yet learned to “control his mind.”

Now you might be thinking that I am indeed a sucker and this guy I have been dealing with is a 23 year old nut case. I do have a soft spot for him because he studies sociology and mediates regularly. However, I think his somewhat outrageous claim might be at least somewhat true. The Japanese institutionalized him because he was acting weird and his family were worried about it, not because he was clinically ill. Relying on the explanatory power of mental phenomena for one's behavior is indeed a slippery slope, but he really does contemplate a lot of things that his peers do not. I have to believe that rare condition of being came about through some sort of individual effort to open up his perspective on the world and his life within it.

I spent about twenty four hours residing in a 10x10 room with him and another twelve being taken on whirlwind tours through the city on his motorcycle, so I should have a little insight on this matter. Still, I cannot say for sure whether his craziness might just be in remission (he is not medicated) or was simply never a real phenomena. I can say that he is the best host I have had thus far. He is really interested and interesting, plus he took incredible care of me. It would have like hiring a servant/chauffeur/conversant in India. I taught him a little yoga in return and gave him some bits of software that probably won't work on his mac, but we are nowhere close to even. He even called up a friend of his who is a geisha so we could arrange to meet her and ask questions about her work. This failed, but other attempts to enhance my time in his city did not. We went to three separate festivals, tons of temples, the surrounding mountain tops, and lots of interesting shops in the central market. To top it all off, he let me share his wireless Internet, which is the only reason I was able to figure out how to get the videos working on my website. What a guy, crazy or not, I like him!!!