Won't You Take Me To Oda Town!

So Mark Cuban, the Jed Clampett of Dallas, has done bought his hisself a whole town! Says he doesn't know what he wants to do with it but knowing his luck "up through the ground come a bubbling crude". Luckily for him, I have an even better idea - even if painfully obvious: build a recreation of Japanese warlord Oda Nobunaga's Azuchi castle. Duh!

Truth be told, this wouldn't even be the first Asian landmark recreation in Texas. That distinction belongs to The Forbidden Gardens, just outside of Katy near Houston.

Forbidden Gardens was built in 1997 at the pleasure of Ira P. H. Poon, AKA "Mr. Poon," a Hong Kong real estate mogul who wanted people of Asian descent (including his teenage children) to know something of Asian culture besides firecrackers and kung-fu. Mr. Poon lives in Seattle, but preferred constructing the sprawling exhibit somewhere outdoors, open year-round, on flat, cheap land, where there was a large Asian population. Houston, 25 miles east of Forbidden Gardens, has the third highest in the nation.

Terra-cotta army.

People visit Forbidden Gardens from all over the world, particularly from China. We were told the Chinese government makes travel within China so difficult that it's easier to fly to America and see a miniature replica than it is to stay home and see the real thing.

The attraction, built for an estimated $20 million, covers 40 acres and 2,000 years of Chinese history. It is a curious, impressive, motionless place on the Texas flatlands, with its tranquil courtyard, shaded arcades, koi fish pond, the smell of incense in the thick air and the sounds of Chinese zither plucking from hidden speakers.

Alas, the Forbidden Gardens closed in 2011 due to highway construction. Shame. But now we have to a chance to avenge that wrong. The surprising confluence of Japanese culture in DFW makes this the perfect place for what would be the crown jewel. In Plano, we have the national headquarters for Toyota. In Dallas, the The Ann and Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum: The Samurai Collection boasts the largest collection of samurai armor outside of Japan (and it only keeps growing). Fort Worth has one of the top Japanese Gardens in the country. Mistuwa grocery store and Kinokuniya bookstore also have rare locations here. Like I said, building a Japanese castle is painfully obvious at this point.

Just imagine driving down the highway and seeing an exotic Asian silhouette reaching out to the sky. People would be crawling over themselves to get to it. Oda Nobunaga was the greatest mind in Japanese history, a man from a small, weak province who led the conquest of a nation. His was the first of the great castles, built more as a palace than a military structure.

Accoutrements would include a satellite installation of the Barbier-Mueller museum (they have enough to fill several museums),  small garden, along with Torii gates and stunning red Japanese bridges, recreation of a fuedal village, and maybe even a ryokan (traditional Japanese inn). It would be as magical as any Disney park but overflowing with the history of one of the most unique cultures in the world.

Azuchi:

You're welcome, Mark!

21st Century Jonah

99,000 drawers on the wall!
99,000 drawers!
Open one up
See what's inside
Remember it till you die!

The enormity of the Building is so large you have to take into account the curvature of the earth to correctly calculate its size. Even then, some said its size could never be calculated because the human life span is too short. As fresh meat to be ingested and digested within, I watched my fellow inmates scurry to and fro, possessed by purposelessness, forever fetching the needs of countless faceless machines.

Along the top of the walls is an ever present electronic ticker scrolling an endless stream of drawer numbers demanding to be served, like Times Square in Hell's alley. The LED lights glanced off my awestruck face as I was escorted mouth agape to my own personal cell. Worst part was I forgot to leave a trail of bread crumbs if to ever find my way out again.

I kept thinking, "This must be how Jonah felt - only without the hope."

The drawers ran from floor to ceiling, running into the billions, surrounding me and drowning me in terror, plastered with mind-bending labels like "GUBIJN584578RTBIUY" and "!@#$%^*(*^%$#$%^*".  My smiling co-worker was talking nonstop guiding me to the center of my demise but I could barely hear her over the roar of silent screaming in my head. Surely, a place like this is not allowed in the universe. Surely, God thinks more of us than this. Has Darkness won the battle for eternity?

One phrase made it through the jungle mist of horror: "Don't worry. You'll get the hang of it. Been here all my life and still don't know where everything is. You never can. Sometimes I even mumble numbers in my sleep! But, yes, you can become like we are." In the fog of whore I saw a smile meant to reassure. Like a tire with a hole, my spirit dissipated into the miasma until I was fully emptied as I arrived at my computer-designated post. Squinting through the gloom I saw my various "colleagues" chained to their own posts in various states of disrepair, like a dog outside, exposed to weather that gradually reduces it to death; its eyes already vanquished.

Your value is judged by how many drawers' contents you can memorize. 1/2 inch copper conduit. Solenoid wrap indicator switch. Bell housing flex material by grade. Along with six million variations of widgets. And don't forget the vendor ID.

During my night sweats I dreamt I was on a treadmill, never reaching the drawer to which I had been called. The company ogres who can take lives at any time for any reason yell at me louder and fiercer as I fail to fulfill my order and therefor my reason for being. Yet on the treadmill, the harder I try the more I die. In a fit of despair I fling off all my clothes with a cry of pain. "Look, he's human! The fucking freak! Get his damn ass! Get him NOW!" Their hatred is fired by the torment of needing to hide their own humanity.

The only food sustenance is Soylent Green (we all ignored the guy exclaiming what it was). We were animals who'd stepped into a tar pit with only one possible outcome. But no one ever speaks it aloud. We have a mutual contract of doom. We are to substitute the Building's dreams for ours, that the dreams God gave us were immoral and irresponsible; the Building is the highest calling. This clarion call I heard as I watched souls drop and die daily, pleading to a world without ears.

One does not reach such a hellish position without feeling cause to review one's life and felonies past. The Building preys on personal guilt as its foundation; judge, jury, and executioner. Still, I'm left to ponder the severity of my crimes or do all roads lead to power's illusion regardless? Any sliver of escape would do, however remote and distant it may be. A drowning man throws his hand up even with no ship in sight, hoping against hope. Falling down a bottomless pit, a man will grab razor sharp blades if it stops his descent. But in a void, there's nothing to carry the sound of your voice.

Then, standing on my last leg, I heard a message was to be delivered to me. Would this be my deliverance? Had a long lost love sent for me? Had I misjudged the cruelty of the universe? I felt sheepish in realizing I had not given life enough credit for the sanctity of my well-being. A girl with starburst eyes handed me a folded note.

I unfolded it and read: "God Corleone says, Hello."

The Beatdowns

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

After hearing these things a Man Of The World was unimpressed.

"Excuse, my good man. You talk about what will happen, but what about now? What happens now to these people you speak of?"

"Oh, now? Well, now they're fucked six ways to Sunday."

"Fucked as in nothing good happens for them or like really fucked?"

"Fucked like in your worst imagination. Raped, tortured, jailed, maligned, ostracized, and killed in the most sadistic ways possible."

"I see. Not much of a calling card that. So evil has won the day."

"Remember when the Israelites were warring to make a homeland for themselves and suddenly started losing battles? This was because a few among them started to loot their vanquished foes. Had that been allowed to continue they would have been wiped from the face of the Earth. Instead, the looters were purged to preserve the good. But now it's the opposite. The world purges the good in the false hope of making evil safe."

"That strikes me as a bit of a logic problem then. If the good are purged and since evil is self-destructive, that leaves no one left alive in the end."

"True dat."

"Well, how come you got it made? Why hasn't anything bad happened to you? Seems to me your whole argument is invalid since you're doing so well."

"They don't know who to kill until the truth has been fully spoken. Then I'm to be vilified and nailed to a cross until I die with painful thorns stuck in my head."

Onward Christian soldiers!

"So what's the point of all this?? Why were we ever made to begin with just to be wiped out? This is insanity! So much human suffering..."

"Everything will be fine in the end. The good will be restored and the evil of their own volition will leave."

"That all seems too good to be true. Fuck, man, why not just do it now? It really sucks here and is getting worse every day."

"Once this happens no more souls can be saved, the window will be forever shut. In order to save the maximum number the window is left open as long as possible."

"But why wait? I heard God can do anything."

"You heard wrong."

"So there's no hope for the present?"

"There's always hope or the window would close. Just don't confuse hope for yourself with hope for the world - and don't confuse hopelessness for the world for hopelessness for yourself. One is your concern, the other is your Maker's."

"I'll be damned. What a shithole place this is! What in the hell ever possessed me to be on this cursed planet!"

"No one's here who didn't ask to be."

The Man Of The World walked away spiritually destitute and inflamed. He saw no profit in what he heard and vowed to take his reward in this world instead of the next. And for his trappings of power and luxury he would smirkingly "praise God in Heaven" to all who would listen, getting the world to vote him as holy and thus buy the stairway to heaven. And that's how he became a killer.